Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen spoke to the media on the final day of rookie minicamp Saturday at Halas Hall. Here are five things we learned from that session:

(1) Watching safety Dillon Thieneman's college tape, Allen noticed that the Bears first-round pick was always around the ball.

Thieneman appeared in 39 games over three seasons at Purdue (2023-24) and Oregon (2025), registering 306 tackles, eight interceptions, 14 pass breakups, 10.0 tackles-for-loss, 2.0 sacks and two forced fumbles.

"Obviously you can see his athleticism on tape, but I just think the biggest thing was he found his way his way around the ball a lot," Allen said. "And to be able to do that, there has to be some intelligence about him and there has to be some instincts about him. And I think that was the first thing.

"When you're looking at college safeties or safeties in general, it's a production position. And that production can come in a lot of different ways, whether it's tackles or interceptions or PBUs or any of those types of things. But safety is a position that you find your way around the ball, the best ones do, and I thought that showed up with him."

Thieneman also appealed to the Bears because he possesses tremendous speed, versatility and football character. He ran a 4.35 in the 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine and can play both strong and free safety as well as nickel back.

Veteran free agent acquisition Coby Bryant, who is expected to pair with Thieneman at safety, possesses similar attributes. Bryant signed with the Bears after spending his first four NFL seasons with the Seahawks, compiling 227 tackles and seven interceptions. All seven picks came in the last two seasons after he switched from cornerback to safety.

"Both of them have the athletic ability to match up in coverage," Allen said. "That's something that I'm excited about. One of the things that we talked about, not just specifically with that position but overall in general in terms of our defense, was we needed to increase our team speed, and I felt like we were able to do that with several of the draft choices."

(2) Allen believes that all great safeties have at least one thing in common.

The veteran defensive coordinator has coached Pro Bowl safeties for multiple NFL teams with the Saints (Darren Sharper, Roman Harper and Tyrann Mathieu), Broncos (Brian Dawkins), Raiders (Charles Woodson) and Bears (Kevin Byard).

Allen revealed that the one trait they share is "all of them are really smart."

"There are a ton of different things that you have to be able to do, and you're getting everybody on the same page in terms of not only some of run fit stuff that we do, but also in terms of the coverage responsibility," Allen said.

"So there's a lot of communication that goes on at that position and so those guys have to be really smart. And it's not just book smart, it's being able to think and process and make really good decisions. That's what all the great ones really do."

(3) Agreeing with what coach Ben Johnson stated after the draft, Allen praised general manager Ryan Poles for picking players who fit the team's DNA.

Beginning with Thieneman and continuing throughout the rest of the draft, the Bears bolstered their roster with intense competitors who are consumed by football.

"Poles and his staff did a great job of trying to identify the type of players that we're looking for," Allen said. "We're looking for smart players. We're looking for tough players. We're looking for highly competitive players.

"There was a decrease in, 'What's the 40 time? What's the height? What's the weight? What are the athletic movement skills?' It really was, 'Are they above the line athletically? All right, then let's watch the tape and let's let their football character bleed off the tape.' And every one of our players that you look at, they have great football character, and it bled off the tape at us."

(4) One rookie who possesses the characteristics Allen and the Bears covet is sixth-round pick Jordan van den Berg.

Poles traded up to land Van den Berg, a defensive tackle from Georgia Tech who grew up in South Africa playing rugby and cricket before moving to the United States when he was 10.

After playing at Iowa Western Community College (2020-21), he spent five seasons at Penn State (2021-23) and Georgia Tech (2024-25), appearing in 54 games and recording 93 tackles, 20.0 tackles-for-loss, 6.5 sacks, three fumble recoveries and two forced fumbles. Last year the 6-3, 310-pounder established career highs with 44 tackles, 11.0 tackles-for-loss and 3.0 sacks.

"He was one of these guys that, for whatever reason throughout the league, kind of slipped through the cracks a little bit," Allen said. "Sometimes that stuff happens. But he was a player that our scouting staff brought to us, our defensive line coaches primarily. They watched the tape and came to me and they were like, 'Just do me this favor, watch this 60-play cutup.'

"When you're going through the draft process, there's a lot of [discussion about] what this guy can't do. Well, we tried to focus on what this guy can do. And when you watch that 60-play cutup of the things this player can do, it was pretty impressive. Just the movement skills, the power, the athleticism, the effort, the toughness, all those things—the football character—bled off the tape to us. And he was a guy that we thought, 'Man, this guy really fits into what we want to do.'

"There's certainly a lot of things that he still has to improve on. But there's a skillset there and there's a football character there that we were excited about working with."

(5) Allen candidly agreed with Johnson's assertion after the draft that the Bears need to coach better to improve their pass rush.

"There's nothing that Ben said in here that he and I haven't talked about," Allen said. "We've had all these discussions. When you look at things, the first thing you have to look at is 'OK, what could I have done better?' And then 'What could we as a staff have done better?' We had a lot of discussions this offseason about a lot of different things, and one of the things we identified was me.

"We focused so much on installing all the scheme last year because it was brand new, and we do have a high volume of things we carry in the defense. We focused so much on that that we lost sight of some of the fundamentals and techniques that it takes to function, to do those things. I don't think we were as fundamentally sound defensively as we need to be. So how do we have to coach it better? Well, let's minimize how much we're focused on the scheme, OK, and let's focus on not what we're going to do but how we're going do it. I think that's how we're going to improve.

"You look across the board at all three levels of the defense, and I just feel like you go in and you watch it and in some ways you're disappointed because it doesn't look exactly like you want it to look. But you're also really encouraged because if we can get better at those fundamentals and techniques on all three levels of our defense, how much can we really improve?

"That was a big part of what we do in the offseason. We'll have the same discussions next year, and it's still going to come back to how can we coach it better? How can we teach it better? How can we help our players reach their maximum potential? I think any time, if you look at it any differently, I just don't know how you're going to have a lot of success."