Welcome to the seventeenth part of a thirty-two-part series: Reading the NFL Offseason Tea Leaves. Fantasy football tasseography is deeply rooted in the prediction of future fantasy fortunes. Some of the team tea cups we'll be looking into may be larger than others. The smallest of cups may have the most alluring blends of offensive weaponry, or be set to bloom after a long steep. This series will aid in your approach to Redraft and Dynasty leagues by bringing you up to date on:

• Free Agency
  • Re-signings, additions, who signed elsewhere, and what it means for fantasy.
• NFL Draft
  • What can we decipher about the direction a team is headed in based on their draft selections?
• Coaching Changes
  • Who's in, who's out, and how do the coaching philosophies translate to fantasy production?
• Fantasy Fortunes
  • What does this all mean for your fantasy football drafts?

Like tasseography, the arrangement of these four sections will vary as we digest each team's offseasons and see how the offensive pieces settle. Each article will interpret what this NFL team has told us about their future plans based on what they've done since their 2025 season ended. 

Reading the Chicago Bears' 2026 Offseason

Free Agency & Draft Day Additions

After trading away veteran WR DJ Moore, the Bears also lost WR Olamide Zacchaeus in free agency. Luther Burden will likely take on the flanker role for the Bears in 2026. To replace Zacchaeus' talents, they signed WR Kalif Raymond, who is familiar to the coaching staff, to a one-year $3.5M deal.

The Bears also brought in WR Zavion Thomas at pick 89 in the 3rd round after taking TE Sam Roush 20 picks earlier. Thomas is getting some hype as a "weapon", with the Bears using him at RB in rookie camp and Organized Team Activities (OTAs).

Roush will likely be the Cole Kmet replacement when Kmet becomes a free agent after the 2027 season.

Defensively, the Bears lost a few major pieces and will likely win through their offensive firepower in 2026. It's worth noting that, in the event the Bears are in more high-scoring games, which loosely translates to more fantasy points.

Coaching Changes

The Bears promoted Passing Game Coordinator Press Taylor, Bengals Head Coach Zac Taylor's brother, to Offensive Coordinator (OC) after Declan Doyle left for Baltimore’s OC job. Press Taylor is a film buff who's organized 20 terabytes of film that he stores and builds on every year.

There's no reason for this offense to appear any different in 2026, and we know Taylor will be well aware of the play-calling trends he should take advantage of during his tenure as the Bears' OC.

Fantasy Futures

The Bears are going to be a fantasy offense we buy into in all formats. This is an ascending offense with multiple high-end fantasy assets primed to outperform their 2025 stats. Swift and Monangai likely split the majority of touches.

Rookie WR Thomas converting to RB will be an interesting story to track this offseason if it were to be true. If there's more "RB  Zavion Thomas" hype during camp and it allows you to sell him for a 2027 second- or third-round rookie draft pick in dynasty, take the money and run. We're staring down an offense capable of producing a QB1, two RB2s, two WR1-2s, and a TE1.

There will be plenty of discussion about who the WR1 will be in this offense and how TE Colston Loveland will have a large target share that eats into the pie available to Burden and Odunze. Take that with a grain of salt. Even if Loveland has a 25% target share, there's roughly 400 targets available for the rest of the Bears' offensive players.

With DJ Moore gone, there's 85 targets for the WR corps to divvy up, too. Don't sweat selecting the Bears' No. 1 WR. You'll be happy having any of the top target earners in this offense in your lineup for 2026 and beyond.

Cam White is a Senior Analyst & Host at Optimus Fantasy. You can find more of his work on our YouTube channel, and make sure to follow him on Bluesky.