The article Commanders’ Ron Rivera bids farewell to Montez Sweat first aired on NBC Sports Chicago.
The Commanders dealt their star edge rusher, Montez Sweat, to the Bears just before the NFL trade deadline for a 2024 second-round pick.
Sweat was said farewell by the Commanders on Wednesday.
“We really appreciate everything Montez did for us,” Rivera told the journalists on Wednesday. “A fantastic football player… We made the decision… and wish him the best of luck in Chicago.”
Sweat, 27, played five seasons and 67 games (all starts) for the Commanders from 2019 to 23.
Sweat had 35.5 sacks and 197 total tackles in Washington, D.C. He forced nine turnovers, defended 11 passes, and scored on one interception return.
He now joins the Bears, who have the league’s weakest pass rush. Last season, they had the fewest sacks in the NFL, with only 20. With 10 sacks this season, they are once again at the bottom of the rankings.
Sweat’s 6.5 sacks this season equal the total sacks for the Bears’ defensive line this season. The Bears are hoping he can energize an underperforming defensive front.
The topic of Montez Sweat’s future surfaced almost immediately after the Bears acquired him in a trade.
Sweat cost the Bears a second-round selection, so with that kind of compensation, they have little choice but to extend his contract. Sweat is on the final year of his rookie contract, and the team, which is 2-6, did not trade for a half-season rental.
Sweat might be given a franchise or transition tag before free agency, but the Bears would prefer to sign him to a long-term agreement sooner rather than later.
“You start to lose opportunities [by waiting until after the season],” General Manager Ryan Poles told Courtney Cronin of ESPN on Wednesday. “It’s incredibly difficult to see… If you look at the free agent stack now, it will look very different by the end of the year because there are so many different chances in terms of extensions, tags, and other things like that. So, with that type of talent, we decided to capitalize on it now.
“I feel really confident that we can get a deal done.”
Sweat, on the other hand, will have to agree to do it right away, and he stated on Tuesday that he wants to complete his homework first.
“I just want to consider everything around me before I make a decision,” he added.
Sweat, a Washington first-round pick in 2019, has 35.5 sacks in 67 games over five seasons. He has 6.5 sacks in eight games this season, only 3.5 fewer than the Bears as a team.
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