For two months, many had wondered what the Chicago Bears’ plans would be with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. With the top selection and the most cap space of all 32 teams, the suddenly fascinating Bears had options.
They had a choose-your-own-adventure in football team-building.
Would GM Ryan Poles swap the top asset of the offseason for a bevy of resources to jumpstart a Chicago rebuild around promising quarterback Justin Fields? Or would his regime really have traded away the 24-year-old and started over under center?
The definitive answer may come to define the next potential decade of professional football on the Chicago lakefront.
Friday afternoon saw the Bears complete a trade of the No. 1 overall pick with the quarterback-starving Carolina Panthers. In a monster trade haul, Poles and Co. outdid themselves. They not only acquired two first-round and two second-round draft picks, they also managed to bring in one of the NFL’s more underrated receivers — D.J. Moore.
It is a titanic move that could put the Bears in a place to construct a talented core around a sleeper MVP in Fields while simultaneously affording him the comfort of a legit WR1. At the risk of hyperbole, there are strokes of pure genius and utter masterclasses. This deal for Poles and Chicago definitively fits the latter description.
It is one the Bears and their ever-suffering faithful may look upon quite fondly in the years to come.
While the generally abundant reaction to the deal was one of shock, Moore himself might have captured the moment better than anyone. After one of the more significant Friday afternoon NFL news dumps we’ve seen recently, the 25-year-old playmaker shared a succinct two “surprised-face” emoji tweet.
Let’s be honest; that was probably everyone’s thoughts about the trade once they saw the terms. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s a better way to place Chicago’s stunner into context.
But I’ll try.
Beyond the tremendous draft haul, the Bears acquiring a dynamite playmaker like Moore says they believe in Fields with conviction. They believe he can take them to the promised land — a Super Bowl championship — and keep them in the mix for one every season that he wears their uniform. Perhaps more than anything, it is a deal that should finally give Fields a chance to live up to these kinds of high expectations. It is a trade that should unleash the very best parts of Fields as one of the most talented young signal callers in the sport.
With the dust settled, it’s apparent the Bears never listened to the speculative chatter from the outside. From the jump, they knew what they had to do for Fields in January.
That’s because they saw firsthand how Fields tried to carry a barren 2022 team interested in everything but finishing with more points on the final scoreboard. They saw him evolve on the fly into the league’s best-rushing quarterback — almost breaking the single-season rushing record — out of sheer survival. They saw a one-man show transform a 3-14 team, with the top pick in the draft, into a must-watch every single week.
The question in Chicago was never, “how do we move on from Fields?” It was, “how do we build around this bright young man capable of elevating his teammates like a face of the league?”
And rightfully so. If Fields could give defensive coordinators sleepless nights with a bare-bones supporting cast, it was only fair to start filling in the blanks for him.
The coming weeks’ conversation will shift to the next steps of Poles and the Bears’ grand plan. In a blink of an eye, talks will shift from prospective worthy deals for No. 1 overall to hopeful franchise offensive tackles and defenders worthy of being selected at No. 9.
Please make no mistake: This was probably how it would always pan out.
The Bears would always push their chips in on a special quarterback like Fields. Trades like the one we saw on Friday were an inevitability. The next appropriate step is watching Fields launch into the stratosphere with the weight of an entire organization behind him.
Something tells me that’s inevitable, too.