The Chicago Bears reportedly had a chance to trade Justin Fields to a team that would start him in the upcoming season but chose not to pull the trigger. General Manager Ryan Poles also chose to trade Fields for less draft capital than another team offered.
The Chicago Bears traded Justin Fields for basically nothing
The Bears traded Fields to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday evening to be Russell Wilson’s backup. In return, the Steelers sent the Bears a conditional 2025 sixth-round pick. Should Fields play in 51 percent of the Steelers’ offense snaps for the 2024 season, the Bears will net a 2025 fourth from the Steelers.
The deal appeared to be shockingly low in return for the Bears. The Bears received about as much for Fields as they did when they traded wide receiver Chase Claypool to the Miami Dolphins last season.
GM Ryan Poles turned down a better offer for Fields
According to Courtney Cronin with ESPN, the Bears could have received more in return for Fields from another team. However, Poles wanted to trade Fields to the Steelers because he wanted the former first-round pick to have a better chance of success in the league:
“The Bears had an additional offer with stronger draft capital from a team with an established starter, per a source, but chose to send Fields to Pittsburgh with the hope of putting the 25-year-old in a position to continue his development — first as a backup to Wilson and eventually as a starter.”
It’s not every day that a general manager purposefully harms their organization by accepting a lower trade value to help a former player. Poles chose to harm the Bears’ future roster for their next quarterback by trading with the Steelers.
Fields could have been a starter on another team
What makes Poles’ final decision even more bizarre is that there was interest for Fields to be the starter for at least one team. Per Cronin, the “majority” of teams thought of Fields as a backup on their squad, but not everyone thought of Fields as QB2.
“A source told ESPN that five teams in addition to Pittsburgh reached out to Chicago, and the majority of those teams had envisioned the former first-round pick in a backup role.”
Cronin didn’t specify which team Fields would have had a chance to start for. But the Las Vegas Raiders and Minnesota Vikings are two teams Fields was linked to this month that one would think he could come in and compete to be the QB1.
It’s possible Poles’ asking price was too high for the team(s) interested in trading for Fields to be the starter. As Cronin notes, Poles started the free agency period expecting a Day 2 pick for Fields. When those team(s) went for other signal callers on the market this week, Poles wound up being backed into a corner. He traded Fields to the Steelers for a late Day 3 pick because that became Fields’ best opportunity to become a starter.
Regardless, some Bears fans will object to Poles harming the 2024 team by not trading Fields for the best possible return in value for the players on the roster. He didn’t “do right” by them. Poles also didn’t “do right” by Fields by not trading him to a team that would start him because he was too greedy at the start of free agency.
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