To say that the Chicago Bears actually won their trade to the Carolina Panthers is incredibly stupid.
So the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears made a huge trade on Friday night…
I came back to my apartment after jogging and saw Adam Schefter’s tweet. We all did. While we all knew the Bears would likely make a comeback from first place, I never thought in my wildest dreams that their trading partner would be the Panthers. You might be lying to yourself if you don’t think the most ideal trading partner in this scenario is the Indianapolis Colts…
Well, it takes two teams to make a deal, sometimes three or more. Bears got drag.
Compensation update, by sources: The Bears’ #1 overall pick for Carolina is for:
🏈 pick number 9
Choose No. 61
First-round pick in 2024
Second-round selection in 2025
🏈WR DJ Moore pic.twitter.com/hHrHn1UIR2
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 10, 2023
However, for everyone to say that the Bears emphatically won this deal when they weren’t what I would consider a well-run organization at any time in my life (33.5 today!) is downright ridiculous. In a weird way, I think this is a trade that can end up being a win or lose in the end. In fact, I want all trades to be win-win, but I don’t trust any party to this deal.
So let’s hit the brakes for Chicagoland’s Trade Victory Parade a week before St. Paddy’s.
We have no terrestrial idea of who won the Chicago Bears-Carolina Panthers trade yet
For the sake of simplicity, I’ll start with the leopard side of things, well, because it’s easier. They gave up two picks this year (No. 9 and No. 61), the first next year and the second in 2025 and wide receiver DJ Moore. Even though Moore is a good player, he never really moved the needle for me. Carolina sucks since he’s been there, but Chicago is a place where tuners die.
The Bears already have Darnell Mooney, who I kind of like, and tight end Cole Dumb, who grows on me. As for the addition of Chase Claypool, they were stolen by the Pittsburgh Steelers last year. You and I and everyone knows this. Guess who has the first pick at the top of the second round now? This is why I cannot fully trust bears under any circumstances.
Ryan Paul might be a great GM one day, but I don’t trust him. Honestly, I feel the same way about Scott Vetterer in Charlotte. Where it differs for me is I feel like the Panthers really brainstormed to move up eight places from ninth to first. New owner David Tepper is tired of his quarterbacks, as is new coach Frank Reich. This is a bold move, but I get it.
Reich does not do quarterback shortstop. This is good. Everyone has a type. But if it’s Fitterer and Tepper and the rest of the Carolina brass feel strongly about taking CJ Stroud or even Anthony Richardson’s No. 1, then by all means, go get your man. If the new quarterback succeeds, no one will care how much they gave up to get him. If they stink, well, they’ll all get kicked out and start over.
In short, I respect the audacity shown by the Panthers to pull this trade off. For NFC South reasons, I kind of want this to blow up in their face, but their fanbase has been through a lot of late and I don’t want to see a rival team stink of me forever. Trading draft picks, and even a quality player like Moore, Carolina has a subtle sense of focus on quarterback evaluation.
Now let’s talk about Da Bears…
I lived in Chicago for three years. It’s an amazing sports city, but I feel like the passion combined with the cold weather is forcing sports franchises to make constantly impassioned and irrational decisions. Basically, you need Michael Jordan to cover up the ongoing organizational chaos that never seems to completely go away in this one-of-a-kind sports city. Trust me, I want this to work…
However, I cannot understand for the life of me why the Poles returned to ninth place. The other two times, I could recall a circulating team that came back from first place that was involved with the cheap San Diego Chargers. They did it twice in four years. While they did “draft” three future celebrities with those selectors in LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees and then Eli Manning for Philip Rivers, they never won an AFC title with them.
But when the Bolts went back from No. 1 to No. 5 with the Atlanta Falcons in 2001 and No. 1 to No. 4 with the New York Giants in 2004 (sort of), they were still in a prime position to fish out the Hall. The gift of fame. Against all odds, they crushed it with these snaps. The Bears can do it, but I have major reservations about their ability to pull off a win in the ninth.
Because in the fourth place you can get players like Rivers, Derrick Thomas, AJ Green, and Ezekiel Elliott. In the ninth you can get Hall of Fame-level players like Luke Kuechly, Brian Urlacher, and Fred Taylor, but there’s a lot more to Leonard Floyds and Ted Gein Jr. Maybe the Panthers will be bad for a few more years, but I think the Bears have removed themselves from the All-Pro defender equation.
Had the Bears not been traded back over No. 7 to the Las Vegas Raiders, they could have gotten a defensive blue. Talent wise, Will Anderson Jr. and Galen Carter will be off the board by then, but you can get someone like Christian Gonzalez or Nolan Smith and then proceed to smash the Falcons into oblivion. Former general manager Ryan Pace is a mess.
look. I want the Poles to prove me wrong and I want Cobb County’s Justin Fields to be an absolute star that the great city of Chicago deserves. I want every third child to grow up in Chicagoland to be named Justin. I really want this for you. But I can’t trust the Bears, who I describe to my Atlanta friends as the Falcons before Arthur Blank bought the team. Ike…
Preferably, I wanted the Poles to stand first and make teams pick after the Bears like the Houston Texans, Arizona Cardinals, and Colts. “Yeah, we’ll come back to swap, but no more than No. 5. Get on the phone with Seattle or whoever and make it happen.” Simply put, No. 9 is a long way off, and you know it. Even with all of these choices, you still have to recruit men.
Ultimately, the Bears will need to squeeze the bulk of these picks to win the deal in the end, especially if it’s Richardson, Stroud, or whoever replaces Cam Newton on the Panthers’ Mt. Rushmore. Instead of having enough tokens to buy the coolest thing behind the counter at Dave & Buster’s, the Bears decided to stock up on glassware and a bunch of chewing gum. You can’t live on chewing gum.
I’m glad they were able to strike a deal, but I still don’t think they were the right business partners.
