It’s time for the Bears to decide if Jaylon Johnson is going to be with them beyond this season.
Johnson, whom Pro Football Focus currently ranks as the NFL’s second best cornerback, is eligible for free agency after the season. There have been reports this week that the team is taking to him about a contract extension, and every reason to believe he’ll be traded by Monday’s league-wide deadline if the sides can’t come to an agreement.
Johnson ended a 28-game interception drought last Sunday, swiping two passes in a 30-12 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders. He returned one of them for a touchdown and celebrated with a gesture that translated to raining money over the end zone.
“I know who I am, and I know I can play this game at a high level,” Johnson told reporters after the game. “I feel like I deserve to be paid like that. I’m taking that attitude for any team, for any and everybody in the NFL. So I mean if it’s with the Bears, then I’ll do that.”
Johnson, 24, was a second-round pick in the 2020 draft. He carries a cap hit of $3.6 million in the last year of his $6.5-million rookie deal. The website Spotrac sets his market value at three years, $23.3 million — an annual salary of about $7.7 million.
Spotrac compares Johnson to Charvarious Ward, Taron Johnson, Emmanuel Moseley and Jourdan Lewis. Those players signed multi-year deals in their ages 24-26 years but Johnson is likely to be seeking a bigger deal, as the one suggested by Spotrac would barely move him into the top 30 of cornerback salaries. The Bears rewarded tight end Cole Kmet with a four-year, $50 million contract extension in July (with about $30 million guaranteed), and cornerbacks are generally considered more valuable than tight ends.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Johnson is seeking to move into the top 10, which begins with the four-year, $52 million extension Tampa Bay gave Jamel Dean. The Bears have plenty of cap room to do a top-10 deal for Johnson, especially if they are willing to replace Justin Fields with Caleb Williams or Drake Maye, but got burned the last time they locked up a piece of the secondary.
Safety Eddie Jackson has battled injuries and inconsistent performance since signing a four-year, $58.4 million deal. PFF, which ranked Jackson as the league’s best safety in 2018, had him in the bottom half the next three years.
The Bears may ultimately give Johnson a take-it-or-leave-it option as he would bring a lot of capital if the Bears traded him. They moved up in the 2023 draft to take a potential replacement in Tyrique Stevenson and have seen solid play by others since second-year cornerback Kyler Gordon went on Injured Reserve with a broken hand. Gordon was injured in the season opener.
Terell Smith, a fifth-round pick from Minnesota in ’23, had started two games before being hit with a bout of mononucleosis. PFF ranks him 26th among 115 qualifying cornerbacks. Greg Stroman, who spent time on practice squads in Buffalo and with the Los Angeles Rams after being waived by Washington, is ranked 39th by PFF.
Does the play of Stevenson (currently ranked 98th by PFF), Gordon, Smith and Stroman cause the Bears to believe Johnson is expendable?
They slipped to the first overall draft spot after trading Roquan Smith and Robert Quinn before the deadline last fall. But they currently hold Carolina’s first-round pick and it appears the 0-6 Panthers will finish lower than the 2-5 Bears so tanking should not be a major motivation in the decision-making process.
It’s not clear how much trade value Johnson would hold as a rental cornerback. Only two cornerbacks were dealt at the deadline a year ago, and both William Jackson and Rashad Felton brought only day-3 picks. The Rams landed a third-rounder when they sent Jalen Ramsey to Miami before the draft last year.
But something is better than nothing. Bears General Manager Ryan Poles should take the best offer for Johnson if he doesn’t want to pay the price to extend him.