(1) Coby Bryant, the team's top free-agent acquisition, has impressed safeties coach Matt Giordano in their short time together, including one specific trait.
"The one trait that stuck out to me is that he triggers extremely well to the football," Giordano said. "He flies to the football. His play style is infectious in a positive way."
Last season in Seattle, Bryant posted career highs with four interceptions and seven passes defended in 15 regular-season starts on the Seahawks' path to a Super Bowl LX victory, a game in which Bryant added four tackles and one pass breakup.
Bryant has also been lauded for his versatile skillset — he played cornerback, nickel back and safety both in college and the NFL — that allows him to have success both in coverage and near the line of scrimmage.
"Versatility is key [in] this league, and so he's a guy that can play in the box," Giordano said. "You see him making plays as a post player, you see him making plays a deep half player ,and then you see him making plays all over the field, whether it's in coverage or as a blitzer. Versatility is key and it makes any defense even more powerful, so we're looking forward to using that this season."
Having already spent significant time at Halas Hall during the Bears' voluntary offseason program, Bryant's presence in meeting rooms, the weight room and on the practice field is noticeable. Coach Ben Johnson previously told reporters that Bryant has an "it" factor. That's also the general consensus among all Bears coaches.
"We're pretty loose in our room, as far as the meetings," defensive backs coach Al Harris said. "And when I say that … we allow guys to kind of relax and show their personality. So we never take the air out of the room from the coaching or the teaching aspect of it. And just him walking in the room with the success he's had, just coming off a Super Bowl win, those things, that's a hard task.
"So, with him, he's been great, man, leadership-wise, and just everything. But I agree with Ben with the 'it' factor — he has that."
(2) After conducting the self-scouting process during the offseason, defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett developed three main goals for his players.
"I told them, No. 1, we've gotta attack the line of scrimmage better," Garrett said. "We've gotta be more disruptive to create TFLs, to create more opportunities for dropback passes so we can go rush.
"No. 2, we talked about being more consistent. You could see flashes of good play, but we want to see it [be] consistent. If you can do it once, you can do it again. So we want to see more consistency with the guys.
"And then we want to affect the quarterback. Pressures, hits, batted balls — any way to affect the quarterback. Looking at it, you're looking at what can we do to improve? No. 1, the pass rush mechanics have gotta be better. That's part of it. We've gotta get off the ball better. We've gotta have better body lean. We can't stand up and try to work our moves on the line of scrimmage. And then we have to finish on the quarterback."
Garrett has already seen small improvements during the last few weeks of on-field work, which he attributes to some changes defensive coordinator Allen made in the group's coaching approach.
Allen told reporters two weeks ago that while evaluating his own coaching and in turn, his staff's, he believes too much focus was put on installing the scheme last season instead of solidifying the unit's fundamentals. Garrett said that led to the defensive linemen spending the first two weeks of the offseason program focusing solely on technique and fundamentals, with no discussion of schematics.
"I think [Allen] has done a great job of helping us position them to where, man, you've got this amount of time to talk about fundamentals and how you're gonna play D-line," Garrett said. "It's been awesome. We've been out at practice, and you can see the improvement of the guys. You spend two weeks ,and all I'm watching is individual [drills]. I'm not watching the scheme. I'm watching our get off, our pad level, I'm watching our drill work. We're correcting that. We're fixing that. That's been really good. It's been really good for our guys and really good for our room."
(3) Harris revealed that the entire defensive staff is pitching in to get first-round selection, Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman, "up to speed" with Allen's system.
Since reporting to Halas Hall for rookie minicamp May 7, Thieneman has made it clear he is hungry to learn and assimilate to the defense, much to Harris' excitement.
"We're not holding back," Harris said. "So, between myself, DA, Coach Giordano, [nickel backs coach] Cannon Matthews, just give it to him and he's going to absorb the information."
Thieneman's mindset isn't a surprise to the coaching staff. When watching his college tape, which included two seasons at Purdue and one at Oregon, and evaluating him off the- ield, the Bears noticed his passion for football was extremely evident.
"You could just tell this guy loves football and he plays the right way," Giordano said. "Everything he does is 100 miles an hour. He's physical, he's trying to just do things."
The speed at which Thieneman plays, both physical and mentally, will be an asset to the Bears secondary, especiallyalongside Bryant. Harris believes that pairing speed with versatility on the back end will allow Allen and the defense to do "whatever we want."
"Speed — you can't coach that," Harris added, "but if you've got guys that can run, guys that are passionate about football, now we have the chance to kind of implement what we do, how we see it, to where we can kind of get into the football."
While Thieneman and Bryant have spent minimal time together thus far, the coaching staff is eager to see their chemistry develop through time and reps together in the final weeks of the offseason program and when the players return for training camp in July. But they can already begin envisioning how the duo can complement each other and be a force for the secondary.
"I think right now, man, we've got a really good group back there with those two players," Harris said. "Both playmakers, similar to what we had last year. Two really good back-end pieces. So I think it'll be awesome, awesome for us to have those two players back there. With Coby, the success he's had, Dillon with the success he's had in college, I think it's going to be great."
(4) Linebackers coach Richard Smith sees "the whole [LB] group is functioning pretty well together," which included new addition Devin Bush getting acclimated.
Smith recalls evaluating Bush and remembering "what kind of player he was" when he came out of college in 2019 before being drafted by the Steelers No. 10 overall.
Seven years later, Smith is excited to work with Bush, who had his most productive year in 2025 with the Browns, setting career highs with 124 tackles, three interceptions, including two returned for touchdowns, and eight passes defended.
"We're fortunate that we're able to get him and right now, I think he's fitting in really well with that group," Smith said. "He's really a likable person. He has that kind of demeanor to him. He's not arrogant, but he is confident.
"He's gonna be a good value for us."
(5) Matthews believes the staff's approach of teaching players multiple positions will be a benefit to rookie Malik Muhammad.
A fourth-round draft pick, Matthews lauded Muhammad for his versatility and football IQ, traits that will be put to the test. Matthews said the defensive back coaches "put the onus on guys to learn it all."
"When we say 'learn it all,' we pride ourselves on the concepts, teaching aspect of it and maybe not play-specific," Matthews said. "It's really just concepts and how everything fits together. So now if I am learning concepts, it really shouldn't be an issue if DA is like, 'Hey Malik, I need you to play the nickel today' or, 'Hey, I need you to play safety today.' Because we've just been learning and teaching concepts to where now we just put you in, and the concepts will keep you clean.
"So I think with our approach that way, it kind of helps younger guys, especially guys that have potential to play multiple positions."
With Muhammad training at both cornerback and nickel back this spring, Harris views him as "a guy that's multiple."
"You can put him on the outside, you can put him on the inside as a nickel," Harris said. "Just from his evaluation on tape, I see a ball guy, you know what I mean? So now, once you give him the rules that what we do here, I think it's going to be good, because you know the ball is life for us. "
