Garrett Bradbury didn’t spend long leaving a mark on the Bears’ center battle.
Chicago entered training camp with real questions in the middle after Drew Dalman’s retirement shook up the position. The Bears moved quickly, trading for Bradbury early in the offseason and then adding Logan Jones in the second round of the 2026 NFL Draft.
That created at least the possibility of a competition. Bradbury, though, seems to have closed the door on that conversation before it ever really got rolling.
By the time the Bears are lining up for Week 1 against the Carolina Panthers, Bradbury has already won over the people who matter inside the building. Offensive coordinator Press Taylor made that clear when he spoke to reporters, praising how Bradbury has handled the job from the start.
"I think Garrett has earned a lot of trust coming in here, and the way he's commanded the huddle, the way he's commanded the line of scrimmage, our communication aspect, the way he does things," Taylor said via CHGO. "He's very loud, very vocal, very confident.
But also very intelligent. He does a really good job of how we want to do it.
There's a lot of conversation that goes on. I mean, we spend walkthrough, we pause walkthrough, we huddle up, and it's Dan, Caleb, Ben, all those guys, Garrett, all in there having a conversation about how we're going to ID certain things because it changes if they do this versus that.
And so he's earned a lot of trust and a lot of respect from a lot of the guys, the coaches and players as well, with what he's done in the last six, seven months that we've had him."
That confidence didn’t appear out of nowhere. Bradbury comes off a season with the New England Patriots that ended in a Super Bowl appearance, and his numbers show a veteran who held up well enough to keep his spot. He allowed 20 pressures and four quarterback hits in 642 pass-blocking snaps.
The grades were more mixed. Pro Football Focus gave him a 60.1 overall mark, which ranked 30th out of 40 centers. His pass-blocking grade landed at 63.1, while his run-blocking grade checked in at 56.2.
Still, for a Bears offense under Ben Johnson that figures to ask a lot of its center, Bradbury fits the role better right now than Jones does. The way Chicago appears to see it, Jones can spend 2026 learning the position and building toward a bigger role later, with a path to taking over in 2027. Bradbury, meanwhile, brings the kind of steady experience the Bears want in front of their quarterback.
That’s the clearest sign yet that Chicago believes it found its answer at center, at least for now. What Bradbury does with that trust once the games start will be one of the more interesting things to watch for the Bears this season.
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