The Chicago Bears settled the one contract question still hanging over their offense with two days to spare. D’Andre Swift and the team reached agreement Friday on a three-year, $33.75 million extension that carries $27.5 million in guaranteed money, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported, with Athletes First agents Trevon Smith and David Mulugheta finishing the deal as the regular season closed in.
Sources: RB D’Andre Swift and the Chicago Bears have reached agreeement on a 3-year, $33.75 million extension that includes $27.5M guaranteed. This is now Swift’s third NFL contract. Trevon Smith and David Mulugheta of Athletes First and the Bears just wrapped up the deal with… pic.twitter.com/JHmA7hIgoH
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 11, 2026
It is Swift’s third NFL contract and his second in Chicago. He had been heading into 2026 on the final year of the three-year, $24 million deal he signed as a free agent in 2024, and the new years carry him through the 2029 season, which would be his age-30 campaign.
The $33.75 million is the number that will travel. The guarantee is the number that explains what the Bears actually decided.
The contract, by the numbers
Swift’s expiring deal paid him $8 million a year. The new one averages $11.25 million across its three added seasons, a bump that is more than $3 million annually, and it lands him in a tier the Bears clearly consider worth protecting: $27.5 million of the $33.75 million is guaranteed, which works out to roughly 81 percent of the new money.
That ratio is the story. Running back contracts are where teams usually hide their exits, front-loading a little cash and leaving the back years soft so they can walk away after one bad season.
A deal that guarantees more than four-fifths of its value is the opposite of that structure. How the $27.5 million splits between money guaranteed at signing and money guaranteed for injury has not been reported, and that breakdown will decide how firm the 2028 and 2029 seasons really are, but the topline share is unusually high for a back on his third contract.
Where it sits in the running back market
Swift’s deal is the first meaningful running back extension since the position’s market moved in early August.
Within a matter of days, Bijan Robinson signed a three-year, $66.75 million extension with $51 million guaranteed, Jonathan Taylor took two years and $44 million with $39 million guaranteed and Jahmyr Gibbs topped both at three years and $67.5 million with $51.5 million guaranteed, a year after Saquon Barkley’s two-year, $41.2 million extension made him the first $20 million running back.
Against that group, Swift’s annual value is almost exactly half. Gibbs averages $22.5 million, Robinson $22.25 million and Taylor $22 million; Swift is at $11.25 million. His guarantee share, though, is right in their company.
Robinson and Gibbs each had about 76 percent of their deals guaranteed, Taylor about 89 percent, and Swift’s roughly 81 percent falls between them.
That is what a second-tier running back contract looks like in 2026. The elite backs got elite money.
The next tier is not getting the money, but it is getting the security, and Chicago decided Swift had earned it before he ever took a snap of a contract year.
The season that earned it
The case for the deal is one line on Pro Football Reference. In 2025, Swift started all 16 games he played and carried 223 times for 1,087 yards and nine touchdowns at 4.9 yards per attempt, adding 34 catches for 299 yards and another score, per Pro-Football-Reference.
His 1,386 scrimmage yards and 10 total touchdowns were both career highs, and he added 32 carries for 130 yards and a touchdown across two playoff games.
The more telling comparison is with the year before. In 2024, Swift’s first season in Chicago, he carried 253 times for 959 yards at 3.8 per attempt.
A year later he had 30 fewer carries and 128 more yards, a jump of more than a yard per attempt in Ben Johnson’s first season as head coach. Over two years with the Bears he has 33 starts, 2,046 rushing yards, 15 rushing touchdowns and 76 receptions.
Efficiency on fewer touches is exactly the profile a team pays for. It suggests the scheme is doing some of the work, which is a reason to keep the back in the scheme rather than a reason to let him test what another team would pay.
What the Bears said, and why now
General manager Ryan Poles had been telegraphing this for weeks without committing to it. Asked about Swift’s future before the season, he framed the running back as one piece of a larger allocation puzzle and then made clear where his own preference sat.
“But I love Swifty. I love the way that he’s working,” Poles said, per CHGO’s staff roundup.
Running backs coach Eric Studesville went further Thursday at Halas Hall, a day before the deal was done, describing a player who had positioned himself in every part of the building to have a big year.
“I love how he works. He’s been more impressive in person,” Studesville said.
The timing is the other tell. CHGO’s Adam Hoge wrote that when the site spoke with Swift at the Super Bowl in February, he was not certain he would still be part of the Bears’ plans this season.
Seven months later, Chicago paid him before the opener rather than letting a contract year play out. The Bears open Sunday at Carolina, and the front office chose to get to that game with one fewer open question on the roster.
The road to a third contract
Swift was the 35th pick in the 2020 draft, taken by Detroit out of Georgia, and his three seasons with the Lions produced 1,680 rushing yards and a lot of arguments about his role.
Detroit traded him to Philadelphia in 2023, and the one year at home was his breakout: 229 carries, 1,049 yards, 1,263 yards from scrimmage and his only Pro Bowl selection, per Pro-Football-Reference.
Chicago signed him the following March, and the two years since have gone the way the Bears hoped. He has started every game he has played for them, and last season he split the backfield with rookie Kyle Monangai, with Swift as the explosive half and Monangai the power complement.
The market told the Bears what a back like Swift is worth, and the answer was not $22 million. It was a middle-tier salary with top-tier security, paid to a 27-year-old who got better on fewer touches in the system his head coach built.
That is a bet on Johnson as much as on Swift, and Chicago made it with the clock at two days and counting.
