Larry Mayer

When the Bears acquired Joe Thuney in a trade with the Chiefs in mid-March, the four-time All Pro guard arrived with one year left on his contract.

Not long after he began working with his new teammates and coaches, Thuney knew that he wanted to remain with the Bears beyond the 2025 season and promptly signed a two-year extension this week.

"As the days rolled into weeks, you realize this is a special place, special building, special history here and the people in the building just make it even more special," Thuney said. "Pretty early on I could just tell this is something I want to be a part of, something that I think would be really cool going forward."

Thuney has especially been impressed with the attention to detail, focus and passion he's sensed from players, coaches, management and staff members.

"It's been awesome," he said. "It seems like everyone's pulling in the same direction. Everybody's really determined to keep working and improving. I couldn't be happier and [I'm] really, really excited to be here."

Thuney brings a championship pedigree to the Bears. Over his first nine NFL seasons with the Patriots (2016-2020) and Chiefs (2021-24), he won four Super Bowls, two with each team. Individually, Thuney was named first-team All Pro each of the past two seasons and voted to the Pro Bowl each of the last three years.

Selected by the Patriots in the third round of the 2016 draft out of North Carolina State, Thuney became the first NFL player to start in the Super Bowl in each of his first three seasons in the league. Remarkably, he once again started three straight Super Bowls the past three years with the Chiefs.

The Bears traded for Thuneywho's lining up at left guardas part of a complete overhaul of their interior offensive line. General manager Ryan Poles also acquired right guard Jonah Jackson from the Rams and signed center Drew Dalman in free agency. All three players are under contract for multiple seasons.

"Drew and Jonah are great guys," Thuney said. "They work relentlessly. Weight room, film room, every part of the game. You can tell how passionate they are for the game. It's cool that guys will be here for a couple years and you know that, so it's been great working with them."

The Bears are counting on Thuney to provide veteran leadership, and he is more than willing to mentor young teammates.

"I always want to be available for the guys in the O-line room," he said, "whether it be plays or situations or time of year, anything really to talk aboutjust things I've seen, things I've been throughand then try and just get a routine with guys and work, whether it be after practice or after meetings or whatever. You just want to be a resource for the guys and kind of show my routine through the season, through the offseason."

Two of the young offensive linemen Thuney is working with are tacklesOzzy TrapiloandKiran Amegadjie. The Bears selected Trapilo in the second round of this year's draft out of Boston College.

"He's a really nice guy, good dude," Thuney said. "Works really hard, gets in his playbook. It's a big jump going from college to the pros and he's working really hard, keeping his head down, listening, taking everything in like a sponge."

Amegadjie appeared in six games with one start as a Bears rookie last year after being chosen in the third round of the 2024 draft out of Yale.

"He's another really hard worker, really smart guy," Thuney said. "It's fun to talk back and forth, play next to him and seeing how we see the game and talking about different looks It's been really cool."