The Chicago Bears are starting to get exactly what they paid for from Dayo Odeyingbo.
That was far from obvious after last season. In 2025, the free-agent signing brought back one sack in eight games, then saw his year end with a torn Achilles. For a player handed a three-year, $48 million deal to help fix the pass rush, it was about as rough a debut as you could draw up.
Four games into the new season, though, the picture looks very different. Odeyingbo has already tripled last year’s sack total, and the Bears’ defense is suddenly playing like a unit that belongs in the conversation among the league’s better groups.
Odeyingbo’s path from disappointment to impact has been quick. Chicago brought him over from Indianapolis with some real belief in his upside, especially after he posted eight sacks for the Colts in 2023.
The contract drew attention, but the logic was clear: the Bears weren’t paying for mystery, they were betting on production. Last season never gave them much to work with, as he struggled to affect quarterbacks before the Achilles injury against Cincinnati.
This season has looked far more like the version Chicago hoped for. Odeyingbo has three sacks in four games, plus 12 quarterback pressures. Against the Jets, he turned in one of his best performances yet with a sack, a tackle for loss and a pass defended.
And the Bears do not need him to become a double-digit sack artist for the deal to matter. They needed a defender who could get into the backfield and make quarterbacks uneasy. That kind of disruption has been missing in Chicago for a while.
The defense as a whole is showing that same edge. Last Sunday, the Bears held the Jets to 157 yards of offense.
New York finished with seven first downs, went 0-for-8 on third down and managed only 12 points. Chicago made the Jets look disjointed for much of the afternoon.
Sure, the Jets are not an offensive juggernaut. That caveat is fair. But the Bears have still given up just 28 points over their last three games, and that is hard to ignore.
Dennis Allen deserves a share of the credit. His defense looks more settled, and the front is generating pressure that simply was not there a year ago.
Odeyingbo’s jump is a big reason why. When the line can bother the quarterback without help, the whole structure behind it gets easier to manage.
Allen can keep more defenders in coverage instead of sending extra bodies after the passer.
That matters for a team that has spent too much time watching quarterbacks sit back and wait.
The offense is not guaranteed to carry Chicago every week, and there will be games when it has to survive some lean stretches. A defense that can keep things close changes the math for the Bears, and that is where this start becomes so important.
It also gives Ryan Poles something he badly needed. The general manager has taken heat for his free-agent moves, and Odeyingbo was headed toward becoming another expensive talking point. One sack on a $48 million deal is the kind of return fans will rightly question.
Injuries can’t be planned for, but they still leave the contract looking ugly when production isn’t there. Now, though, Odeyingbo is healthy, getting after quarterbacks and helping anchor a defense that has been tough to score on.
This is only four games, so nobody should be acting like the story is finished. The Bears will face better offenses than the Jets. But there is a real difference between hoping a signing works and seeing it work.
For Chicago, that difference is starting to show up on Sundays. And if Odeyingbo keeps playing like this, that $48 million will look a lot less like a gamble and a lot more like money well spent.
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