I need to say something, and I need you to understand that I’m saying it from a place of deep personal caution built over decades of having my heart broken by a football team that plays in a stadium that looks like a spaceship crashed into a Greek temple. Here it is: the Bears have had a good offseason. I know. I’m scared too.

Ryan Poles — who, for those of you keeping track at home, is the third general manager I’ve been asked to believe in since I started writing this column — went into free agency with a plan and, against all precedent, appears to have executed it. Coby Bryant, a Super Bowl champion safety, signed for three years and $40 million. Devin Bush, a linebacker from Cleveland, signed for three years and $30 million. Neville Gallimore, a defensive tackle with the build of a municipal water tank, signed for two years and $12 million. And then, because apparently Poles woke up one morning and decided to address every position group that needed addressing, he traded a 2027 fifth-round pick to New England for center Garrett Bradbury, filling the hole left by Drew Dalman’s sudden retirement, which itself was the kind of curveball that only the Bears could absorb in March and treat as routine.

The total outlay, by my nephew’s count — and I’m trusting him on this because he has a spreadsheet — is somewhere north of $87 million in new contracts. That’s not nothing. That’s the kind of money that suggests an organization that is no longer content to “build through the draft,” which is the thing every bad team says when they don’t want to admit they’re a bad team. The Bears are buying. They’re buying like a man at Portillo’s who just got his tax refund and doesn’t know when he’ll feel this rich again.

Now, here’s where I’m supposed to temper expectations. Here’s where I’m supposed to say that free agency signings don’t win championships, that the draft is what matters, that Ben Johnson is a first-year head coach and we shouldn’t expect miracles. And all of that is true. I’ve watched this team long enough to know that optimism is just disappointment that hasn’t happened yet. I remember 2022, when we were supposed to be “ahead of schedule.” I remember 2024, when Caleb Williams was going to “change everything.” I remember a lot of schedules and a lot of changes and a lot of Januarys spent watching other teams play football while the Bears played golf.

But — and I want you to hear the “but,” because I don’t use it lightly — this feels different. Not different in the way that every offseason feels different, which is to say not different at all. Different in the way that the moves fit together. Bryant gives you a secondary that can actually cover. Bush gives you a linebacker corps that doesn’t make you wince on third down. Gallimore gives you an interior push that the defensive line has needed since roughly the Eisenhower administration. And Bradbury gives you a center who has started 70 NFL games, which is 70 more than the guy who retired.

The re-signings matter too. Braxton Jones on a one-year deal means continuity on the offensive line without long-term commitment, which is the Poles way — “I like you, but let’s see how this goes” is essentially tattooed on every contract he writes. Case Keenum coming back on a two-year, $5.5 million deal gives you a backup quarterback who has actually won games and who can, in a pinch, be trusted not to throw the ball to the other team more than twice per half.

Do I think the Bears are a Super Bowl team? No. I think the Bears are a team that might win nine or ten games and make the kind of playoff appearance where you lose in the wild card round by two touchdowns and everyone says “but the future is bright,” which, in the history of this franchise, constitutes a golden age. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe, after years of watching this organization stumble from one rebuild to the next like a man trying to find the bathroom in the dark, a competent offseason is its own kind of victory.

I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ll believe it when the leaves change and the wins pile up and Soldier Field — that beautiful, ridiculous, acoustically challenged monument to civic ambition — is rocking on a Sunday afternoon in October. Until then, I’m at Schaller’s, nursing a beer and reading the depth chart like scripture. The Bears have done their shopping. Now we wait to see if any of it fits.