With the No. 25 pick in the 2026 NFL draft, the Chicago Bears emphasized the defensive side of the ball and selected Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman.
“He was No. 1 on our priority list,” Bears general manager Ryan Poles said. “We take the board before all this kicks off [and] sequence it. He was the top sequence guy on our board.”
Thieneman, a 6-foot-tall junior safety for the Ducks in 2025, is a two-time All-American with uncanny pre-snap recognition skills and an eye for generating turnovers who only continued to ascend after posting impressive results at the NFL scouting combine in late February.
He ran a 4.35 40-yard dash with a 41-inch vertical and a 10-foot-5-inch broad jump at the combine. By the time Thieneman was done at the combine, he registered a Relative Athletic Score (RAS) of 9.72, which ranked 40 out of 1391 strong safety prospects from 1987 to 2026, according to Math Bomb’s Kent Lee Platte.
In 15 games for Oregon in his lone season as a Duck, Thieneman registered 96 combined tackles, 3.5 tackles-for-loss, 5 passes defended and 2 interceptions. The performance earned him Associated Press second-team All-American honors behind Ohio State safety Caleb Downs.
Before he transferred to Oregon, Thieneman spent two seasons at Purdue, where he was a freshman phenom for the Boilermakers. Thieneman notched 106 combined tackles with 6 interceptions and 2 forced fumbles in 2023, which earned him AP freshman All-American honors.
Going back to last season, a phrase Poles, Ben Johnson and Dennis Allen have emphasized is “taking the air out” of opposing offenses and defenses.
Getting younger and faster on the defensive side of the ball is the plan they’ve enacted this offseason to do just that, and Poles pointed out how the Bears believe Thieneman will help them siphon oxygen out of their opponents next year after they picked him in the back end of the first round.
The last time the Bears took a safety in the first round was the 1990 NFL draft, when Chicago selected Mark Carrier out of the University of Southern California with the No. 6 overall pick.
The Bears are fresh off a Cinderella-esque run through head coach Ben Johnson’s first season at the helm. Chicago won 11 games and the NFC North for the first time since 2018 last year, highlighted by seven fourth-quarter comebacks — the final one being a playoff win over the Green Bay Packers.
But after half an offseason of heavy roster turnover, the Bears have little wiggle room left under the cap and several roster holes that still need to be addressed.
Thieneman slots at the other starting safety position opposite the newly acquired Coby Bryant, but Chicago also has clear needs along the defensive line — both at defensive tackle and EDGE rusher — as well as at center, left tackle, linebacker and corner, depending on how team officials feel about the depth on the back half of their defense.
Rounds 2 and 3 of the 2026 NFL Draft resume Friday at 6 p.m. CST in Pittsburgh.
