The Bears have added another name to the left tackle competition.
Chicago is signing Jedrick Wills Jr. to a one-year deal, ESPN's Adam Schefter first reported Wednesday. Wills, a 6-foot-4, 307-pound left tackle, was the 10th overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft out of Alabama. He spent five seasons with the Cleveland Browns before sitting out all of 2025 to recover from a knee injury. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
It's a low-risk addition with legitimate upside — exactly the kind of move Ryan Poles makes when the answer to a position isn't clear. And right now, the left tackle position isn't clear.
Why the Bears Need This
If you've been following our offseason needs series, you already know the backstory. Ozzy Trapilo was looking like he might be the answer — six starts, a 77.7 PFF pass-blocking grade, the third-highest mark among rookie tackles in the NFL from Week 12 on. Then, in the fourth quarter of the Wild Card win over the Packers, he tore his patellar tendon. Ryan Poles said at the Combine that Trapilo is expected to miss most of 2026 — not the whole season, but most of it. That means somebody else needs to protect Caleb Williams' blindside for the early portion of a year where anything short of another deep playoff run will feel like a step backward.
The Bears re-signed Braxton Jones on a one-year deal before free agency opened, bringing back the veteran who won the job in training camp last year before losing it and eventually landing on IR. Theo Benedet — the undrafted Canadian who started eight games in 2025 and held his own in the run game while struggling in pass protection — is back. Kiran Amegadjie, the 2024 third-round pick from Yale who has played six games across two seasons, is still on the roster but hasn't shown nearly enough to project as a starter. And second-year man Ozzy Trapilo, the one the coaching staff actually believes in, is in a rehabilitation facility somewhere working his way back from one of the harder injuries a lineman can suffer.
That was the room before Wednesday. Now add Wills to the mix.
Who Jedrick Wills Is
Wills was supposed to be a cornerstone. The Browns took him one pick ahead of Tristan Wirfs in 2020, betting that the Alabama tackle with the elite athleticism and polished feet could anchor their blindside for the next decade. He earned PFWA All-Rookie Team honors in his first season and started 45 of a possible 50 games in his first three years in the league — an availability record that suggested, at minimum, a reliable starting tackle.
Then it stopped being simple. Wills showed inconsistency in his second and third seasons. He never quite took the step Cleveland needed him to take. And in 2023, a torn MCL limited him to eight games. He came back for five games in 2024 before the knee issues ended his season again. By the time Cleveland let him go, Wills had started 57 of 58 career games and logged 2,121 pass-blocking snaps — the resume of a starter — but hadn't played a full season since 2022. He spent all of 2025 away from football, using the year to get completely healthy.
There's a version of this where the knee issues are behind him and Wills rediscovers what he was before everything unraveled. There's another version where he's a useful swing tackle who never stays healthy long enough to be a factor. The Bears are betting — cheaply — on the first one.
The Alabama connection is worth noting. Wills played right tackle in college to protect Tua Tagovailoa's blindside, then flipped to left tackle once he got to Cleveland. That transition didn't break him; he was a capable starter at the position for multiple seasons. The footwork and the technique were never the problem. The knee was.
What the Coaching Staff Is Working With
Offensive line coach Dan Roushar was refreshingly honest about where things stood before this signing. "I know what the left tackle position looks like in this league," Roushar said earlier this week. "You are the standard. That's a rare player that comes along. But somebody has to play that position similar to that. It's a faceless, nameless guy right now." He told every left tackle candidate in the building the same thing: prove you're that guy.
That challenge now extends to Wills. He'll compete with Jones, Benedet, and potentially Amegadjie for the job Trapilo is supposed to grow back into whenever he's ready. Roushar will get a clean look at all of them in training camp and make his decision from there. The optimistic read is that one of these players separates — that Wills' experience and draft pedigree prove to be the difference-maker, or that Jones rebounds into the player he was before last season fell apart, or that Benedet's run-blocking capabilities translate into enough overall effectiveness to keep the job. The realistic read is that this is a competition without a clear favorite, and the Bears may be hoping the draft solves the problem for them in a more permanent way.
The Bigger Picture
Wills' signing hopefully shouldn't change the Bears' plans for Pittsburgh in April. As we laid out in our free agency report card, left tackle remains the single most important unresolved position on this roster, and the 2026 draft class is deep enough that Chicago should be targeting one with some portion of its four picks in the first three rounds. The left tackle instability last season was identified as a problem while it was happening — four starters, a training camp competition that dragged into December, and enough uncertainty at Caleb Williams' blindside that it became a recurring storyline all year. Johnson managed through it in his first season running this offense, with everyone learning the system together and Darnell Wright providing stability on the right side. He's not going to want to run the same experiment twice.
The Wills signing costs almost nothing in terms of cap flexibility and provides real competition — maybe even a starter — if his recovery holds. If he wins the job and plays well, the Bears have Caleb Williams protected and Trapilo as an upgrade waiting in the wings. If he doesn't, he's depth on a one-year deal that doesn't clog the books when the time comes to move on.
That's smart roster management. It's not a solution. But it doesn't need to be — the draft is six weeks away.