Bears Cut $30 Million Veteran After Questionable Exit vs. Patriots

Getty Bears head coach Matt Eberflus.

The Chicago Bears have finally moved on from troubled veteran right guard Nate Davis ahead of Week 11’s home game against the Green Bay Packers.

According to the team’s transaction wire for November 13, the Bears released Davis from their 53-man roster and signed offensive lineman Jake Curhan from their practice squad to their active roster on Wednesday in a pair of corresponding roster moves.

Davis’ release has felt inevitable for much of the 2024 season. The Bears benched him from the starting lineup for Week 3’s game against the Indianapolis Colts and replaced him with veteran Matt Pryor. Three weeks later, they made him a healthy scratch for Week 6’s game in London despite multiple injuries elsewhere on their offensive line.

The Bears’ decision to release Davis comes just three days after they made him a late addition to the injury report on game day against the New England Patriots in Week 10. Following the 19-3 loss, head coach Matt Eberflus explained that Davis reported back tightness before kickoff, which prompted the team to rule him out for the game and to send him home because “we don’t want a guy standing on two feet with a back issue.”

Davis did not play another snap for the Bears before his release.

The Bears also signed second-year center Ricky Stromberg — a 2023 third-round pick — to their practice squad on Wednesday to fill the spot Curhan vacated when he moved to the active roster. Stromberg played 26 offensive snaps in four games as a rookie for the Washington Commanders, but they released him in September before his second year.

Nate Davis’ Time With Bears Marred by Disappointment

The Bears signed Davis to a three-year, $30 million contract in 2023 NFL free agency, hoping he would become a stabilizing veteran presence for the interior of their under-contraction offensive line during their rebuild. They even agreed to guarantee more than half of his contract — $19.25 million — emphasizing their trust in him as a starter.

Roughly 20 months later, though, Davis looks like one of the biggest mistakes of Ryan Poles’ three-year tenure as the team’s general manager. The 28-year-old guard played in just 16 of 26 possible games for the Bears since the beginning of the 2023 season and started in just half of those games. Even when Davis played, he struggled to consistently pick up his blocking assignments and was oftentimes a liability as a pass protector.

Davis also had his effort called into question. Following the Bears’ 2024 season opener, CHGO’s Adam Hoge reported on The Athletic’s “Scoop City” podcast that Davis “doesn’t like to practice” and that the team had grown “frustrated” with his practice habits after he missed a significant portion of training camp for a second consecutive season.

Ultimately, the Bears’ frustrations with Davis grew to the point that they felt they could no longer trust him in the lineup. Not only did they demote Davis behind Pryor on the depth chart, but they also bumped him below fifth-year backup guard Bill Murray, who entered the 2024 season having never played a regular-season snap in the NFL.

According to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, the Bears tried to trade Davis before the league deadline on November 5 and were even willing to eat some of his contract in order to facilitate a deal, but they found no takers. Instead, they bookended his disappointing tenure with the last-resort move: releasing him midseason from the active roster.

Bears Add Intriguing Center for Future Development

On a positive note, the Bears got a little deeper at center on Wednesday when they signed Stromberg to their practice squad as an intriguing development candidate.

Stromberg started 44 games at center during his collegiate career at Arkansas and finished his 2022 senior season as both a first-team All-SEC selection as well as the recipient of the Jacobs Blocking Trophy, awarded each season to the SEC’s best blocker. Pro Football Focus also named him an honorable mention on its All-American Team.

The Bears showed some interest in Stromberg coming out of college. They hosted him for an official top-30 visit during the 2023 pre-draft process, at which time they were planning to make waning veteran Cody Whitehair their starting center for the season. While the Bears did not select him, they will now have an opportunity to develop him further with questions persisting about their future at center in 2024 and beyond.