ESPN’s Jeff Saturday: How Jeffery Simmons to the Bears Impacts the NFC North

The NFC North was already the deepest division in football. Then Chicago added Jeffery Simmons, and Jeff Saturday thinks the balance of power just shifted.

Rich set the table for the ESPN analyst. The division is "top to bottom outstanding," with every team above .500. The Lions and Vikings were set to play each other, and the Packers had a game that night after a bitter loss to Detroit. So Rich asked for a take. Do the Bears win the division now? Did the Simmons trade seal it?

Saturday was honest about where he stood a day earlier. He had picked Detroit, and he had nothing but praise for the Lions quarterback. "I think Jared Goff is absolutely insane," Saturday said. "He has played fantastic this season." He also noted he had gone on record disliking Dan Campbell's decision to go for it on his own 25.

But Simmons in Chicago changes the math for him. Defense was the area of concern for the Bears, and now they have a player in the middle who can rush the passer and also play the run.

"He will make other players around him better," Saturday said. "He's a force multiplier. And so I would say now that the NFC North is on notice, man. This team, they're for real."

Saturday pointed to style of play as the part he loves most. Ben Johnson wants to be physical and calls a physical offensive game. Now the Bears can flip that over and play physically from the defensive front, something Saturday said they had lacked a bit.

"Holy mackerel, dude," Saturday said of Simmons. "This dude, he's an animal, man."

He framed Simmons as the kind of player opponents have to plan around, the same way teams prep for Detroit's top pass rusher. Can you find him? Can you block him? "That's exactly what everybody's going to be doing when they're prepping for the Bears," Saturday said. His bottom line: "I would lean it towards the Bears now."

Rich wasn't ready to hand Chicago the crown. He reminded Saturday that the Packers are getting Micah back and the Vikings are undefeated. And while he agreed with Saturday on Goff, he made the case for the Lions defense too.

"They're getting healthy on the defensive back end," Rich said. Brian Branch came back, and Kerby Joseph returned to practice. Rich called them the guys from a couple of years ago "when the Lions were threatening to make the Super Bowl," and now they are back or on the way back.

That leaves the division with four legitimate claims and a fresh piece in Chicago that Saturday believes tips the scale. Rich's reaction to all of it was pure anticipation. "I can't wait to see this whole thing play out," he said, with Lions and Vikings first up.