After an early offseason filled with speculation about the Chicago Bears’ running back room, the team has reached OTAs without adding a heavy-hitter to push veteran D’Andre Swift for the No. 1 job ahead of the 2025 NFL season.
The Bears made some moves at running back, re-signing veteran Travis Homer (a core special-teamer) and selecting Rutgers standout Kyle Monangai in the seventh round of the 2025 NFL draft last month. They will also return former fourth-round pick Roschon Johnson and Ian Wheeler, who shone as an undrafted rookie in 2024 before an injury.
As things stand at the end of May, though, Swift is still the clear choice to lead Chicago’s backfield in 2025 after averaging a career-low 3.8 yards per carry last season. And if he begins the regular season as the No. 1, a bounce-back year could be on the horizon.
“There were serious questions earlier this offseason about D’Andre Swift’s standing in Chicago after a difficult first year,” Pro Football Focus’ Dalton Wasserman wrote on May 28 in an article that identified one bounce-back candidate for all 32 NFL teams.
“However, the Bears didn’t make any splash moves to replace him, and he now reunites with Ben Johnson while running behind a revamped offensive line. Though it came on a relatively small sample of carries, Swift posted a career-high 83.2 rushing grade in 2022, his final season in Detroit. His familiarity with Johnson and the Bears’ offensive line upgrades should set the stage for a more efficient 2025 campaign.”
D’Andre Swift Could Have Career Season for Bears in 2025
Swift earned plenty of the skepticism that has come his way during the 2025 offseason. While he led the Bears with 959 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns and added 42 catches for 386 yards as an every-game starter, he also recorded the second-lowest success percentage (43.9) of his career and had just seven forced missed tackles (34th).
There are reasons to suspect things will be different for Swift in 2025, though.
On an individual level, Swift showed some positive things in the margins in 2024. He recorded more than half of his yards after contact (586), overcoming multiple instances in which his offensive line’s run-blocking broke down or play-calling set him up to fail. He also played in every game for the first time in his career despite taking the 10th-most carries (253) and running the fourth-most routes (353) among league backs.
The Bears have also made improvements on offense that should help Swift. They have hired a new, offense-minded head coach in Ben Johnson and the intense Eric Bieniemy as their new running backs coach. Chicago also refitted the interior of its offensive line with three new starters, including two-time first-team All-Pro left guard Joe Thuney.
Swift must still embrace the new scheme and coaching style to find success in 2025. He will also need to focus on keeping his body right to avoid falling out of favor as he did in his first NFL stop with the Lions. If he can stay healthy, though, it is not unrealistic to think that the 26-year-old could exceed his career-best outing of 1,049 yards this year.
Will Bears Sign or Trade for Another RB Before Camp?
For now, the conditions seem right for Swift to have a bounce-back season in 2025 and potentially even sprint off for new career-highs in rushing yards and total touchdowns.
Given all the smoke about the Bears’ interest in adding a running back this offseason, though, it would come as no surprise if they added another veteran — either through trade or free agency — between the end of OTAs and the start of training camp in July.
Nick Chubb and J.K. Dobbins are the two best remaining free-agent options on the market, despite each coming with their own set of injury concerns. Either one would add a nice power-back complement for the Bears to use in tandem with Swift to attack the line in short-yardage and goal-line situations. And considering Dobbins had his own bounce-back year in 2024 — 905 yards in 13 games — he seems like the ideal choice.
Alternatively, the Bears could get more ambitious and explore their options on the trade market. Buffalo’s James Cook, Seattle’s Kenneth Walker III, New York’s Breece Hall, and Jacksonville’s Travis Etienne Jr. are all running backs who will need new contracts during the 2026 season and could become trade chips if negotiations stall out in camp.
With Walker and Etienne specifically, the growing crowd in their respective backfields could motivate their teams to shop them around for a relatively low-cost trade price.
The Bears could still emerge from OTAs feeling like they have enough talent in place at running back, but an addition remains possible.
