D’Andre Swift, the running back two NFL teams let go and Chicago paid to keep

D'Andre Swift

Photo: Tammy Anthony Baker, Photographer / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	January 14, 1999 Philadelphia
Occupation	Footballer
Individual awards	Pro Bowl · First-team All-SEC

The run D’Andre Swift talked about all summer was the one he never made. In the most productive season of his professional life, measured in yards and touchdowns, he did not break a single truly long carry. He said so himself at training camp, with the bluntness of a player who had read his own numbers: “The only thing I was missing last year that I need to do a better job of is I need more explosive runs, longer runs.” In the first game of the new season he broke two long runs and scored three times. Three weeks later he spent the rest of a win on the sideline.

That swing is his career in small. Swift has started for three NFL franchises, and two of them concluded they could do better. The third, the Chicago Bears, has just decided the opposite and paid him to stay for three more years.

The first version of him was built in Philadelphia, where he was born on January 14, 1999, and where he starred at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School. As a senior he ran for 1,564 yards and 25 touchdowns on only 149 carries, numbers that sent him south to Georgia.

In Athens he waited behind Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, both future NFL starters, and still averaged more than eight yards a carry as a freshman. As a sophomore he split the work with Elijah Holyfield and became the back Georgia liked to throw to; in the SEC Championship Game against Alabama he scored once on the ground and once through the air in a 35-28 loss. His final college season brought 1,218 rushing yards and First-Team All-SEC honors, and he left with 2,885 career yards, the seventh-highest total in the program’s history.

The Detroit Lions took him 35th overall in the 2020 draft. His debut, against the Bears, held both sides of the player in one afternoon: a rushing touchdown, and then a dropped pass in the end zone in the final seconds that would have won the game. Five weeks later he ran for 116 yards and two scores against Jacksonville, the first Lions rookie running back to do that since Barry Sanders in 1989. Detroit never made him the whole show. He shared the backfield with Adrian Peterson and then with Jamaal Williams, never reached 650 rushing yards in any of his three seasons there, and did much of his damage as a receiver, with 62 catches in 2021 alone.

The end in Detroit arrived during the 2023 draft. The Lions spent the 12th overall pick on Jahmyr Gibbs, a younger back with the same receiving profile, and two days later sent Swift to Philadelphia for a 2025 fourth-round pick. The homecoming produced his best season. In Week 2 he ran for a career-high 175 yards against the Minnesota Vikings and was named NFC Offensive Player of the Week; by the end of the year he had his first 1,000-yard season and his first Pro Bowl selection.

Then the story turns less flattering. The Eagles did not bring him back. They spent their money instead on Saquon Barkley, who ran for more than 2,000 yards in his first year in Philadelphia and helped the club win Super Bowl LIX. In hindsight, Swift’s year there looks like a contender’s bridge to the back it really wanted. The standing knock on him among analysts has barely moved since college: he is more athletic than truly elusive, and he breaks few tackles. His Chicago numbers have done little to settle the argument. He averaged 1.8 yards a carry through his first three games as a Bear, and in his second season Kyle Monangai, a seventh-round rookie, kept taking a share of the work that a featured back would normally keep.

Chicago had signed him in March 2024 to a three-year, $24 million contract, and his first year there ended with 959 rushing yards. The arrival of Ben Johnson as head coach in 2025 changed the context. Johnson had been on Detroit’s offensive staff for all of Swift’s years with the Lions, rising to coordinator in his final season there, and his running game suited the player, even if that 2025 season produced no run longer than 25 yards. Swift finished with career highs of 1,087 yards and nine rushing touchdowns. In a Week 13 win over the Eagles, his old team, he ran for 125 yards while Monangai added 130, the first time two Bears backs had cleared 100 in the same game since Walter Payton and Matt Suhey in 1985. Chicago went 11-6 and won the NFC North. In the wild-card game against Green Bay, Swift scored the Bears’ first touchdown with his team trailing 21-3 in the fourth quarter, the start of a 31-27 comeback. The run ended a week later with a 20-17 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the Divisional Round.

On the eve of the 2026 season the Bears gave him a three-year, $33.75 million extension with $27.5 million guaranteed. General manager Ryan Poles said Swift “epitomizes the values of the culture that we are building.” Two days later Swift answered with 124 yards and three touchdowns on 18 carries, including runs of 32 and 28 yards, in a 59-37 win at Carolina, the first Bears player with three rushing scores in a game since Jordan Howard in 2016, and a second NFC Offensive Player of the Week award.

The fumbles came next. He lost one at the goal line in a defeat to Minnesota and another in the third quarter of a 23-12 win over the New York Jets, a game Monangai finished with 30 carries. Johnson called the second one “egregious.” Swift’s reply was three words long: “That ain’t me.” He added that he had not been told anything about a benching, “but I do understand that can’t happen.”

Injuries to Monangai have since handed him the backfield again, and he has used it. He scored twice in a win over Atlanta, then carried 22 times for 78 yards and a touchdown in a 30-24 victory over New England on October 22, his seventh rushing touchdown of the season. The Bears visit the Seattle Seahawks on Monday night, November 2, and Monangai’s return will test what the extension actually bought: a featured back, or the more reliable half of a pair.

Tags: sports, athletes, NFL, American football players, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, D'Andre Swift

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