The Chicago Bears signed defensive back Dillon Thieneman and center Logan Jones to rookie contracts on Friday, bringing two of the team’s top 2026 draft picks officially onto the roster.
Thieneman, the No. 25 overall selection, joined the Bears after transferring to Oregon for the 2025 season following two productive years at Purdue. He started all 15 games at Oregon in 2025, finishing with 86 tackles, two interceptions and seven passes defensed, and earned First-Team All-America and First-Team All-Big Ten honors that season. At Purdue he started all 24 games he played over two seasons, totaled more than 100 tackles each year and recorded six interceptions; he was the Thompson-Randle El Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2023.
Jones, taken at No. 57, arrives from Iowa after a five-year college career from 2020 to 2025. He started 51 of 52 career games at center, was a unanimous All-America selection and a two-time First-Team All-Big Ten honoree in 2024 and 2025. Jones won the Rimington Trophy in 2025 and anchored an Iowa offensive line that received the Joe Moore Award that same season.
The signings close an important offseason box for Chicago: two high draft choices who arrived with significant college résumés are now under contract and available for the team’s offseason program. For the Bears that means an early chance to integrate a decorated interior lineman and a turnover-producing defensive back into position work and scheme installation before OTAs and training camp.
Leaguewide, the transactions also touch on how quickly rookies are resolving their status after the draft. A widely circulated report said that once Thieneman signed there would be just seven first-round picks left unsigned in 2026; a Bears source, however, said both Thieneman and Jones were already signed on Friday, trimming the list of unsigned selections sooner than some expected.
Chicago’s broader roster activity this spring has included a string of draft-pick and free-agent signings as the team completes standard offseason steps; one recent story on the franchise’s local maneuvering is here: The two rookie contracts announced Friday are the clearest immediate results of that work, because they convert draft capital into players who will participate in the team’s on-field preparation.
Notable absences from Friday’s news: the club did not disclose contract terms, and there was no timetable announced for either player’s first full-team practice. What remains unresolved beyond the Bears is when the remaining unsigned first-round picks around the NFL will finalize deals, a practical question for teams still counting on rookies to fill early-season roles.
For now, Chicago can move forward with Thieneman and Jones on the books. The practical next step for fans and roster watchers is watching how the Bears deploy those two in spring work and whether their early availability accelerates the team’s preparation at two positions — the defensive backfield and the center spot — that carry immediate implications for personnel groupings and depth charts heading into camp.
