It’ll be difficult to find any Chicago Bears fan who is upset about landing Justin Fields. The city is starved for a quarterback. This young man from Ohio State is likely the most talented the organization has ever drafted. His ceiling is at an All-Pro level. If he takes to the NFL speed as hoped and gets some good help around him? This team can win a lot of games in the near and distant future.
Yet everything with the Bears always seems to come with second-guessing. A number of people can’t get over one key facet of the picks. What GM Ryan Pace gave up to make it happen. In this case a trade that sent the 20th pick, a 5th in 2021, a 1st in 2022, and a 4th in 2022 in exchange for the 11th pick from the New York Giants. Based on how news sources out east are reacting, many feel Giants GM Dave Gettleman robbed the Bears blind.
Is this actually the case?
Seth Walder of ESPN is an analytics specialist. He decided to crunch the numbers and determined the five best in-draft trades of 2021. By his estimation, no team got better value than the Giants with that deal. The 11th pick is worth only about 20% more than the 20th pick. So to get an extra 1st in the trade was major. However, Walder was quick to point out that doesn’t mean the Bears did a bad thing. Far from it.
Let me start off by saying that trades are not a zero-sum game and this deal is a perfect example: It’s a win-win. The value calculation changes for a team trading up for a quarterback — the upside of “hitting” on the pick is dramatically higher than hitting on a non-quarterback — and so the Bears paying this premium for Fields is, in my view, not only acceptable but worthwhile.
This wasn’t a trade where one GM was trying to simply outfox another. Gettleman wanted to draft a wide receiver. The best three on the board were already gone. None left were worth taking at #11. So he wanted to move down. Pace gave him that opportunity and the Giants could offer something the Bears wanted in return. A quarterback they coveted. Nobody is going to care what Chicago traded if Fields ends up a success. Meanwhile, New York secured extra ammunition and still got their receiver.
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Bears got Justin Fields and retained enough to build around him
The most vital part of that trade was not giving up additional Day 2 picks along with the future 1st. That should give Pace a significant opportunity to still add more help around his young quarterback. The draft proved that already. Just 24 hours after the Fields trade happened, the Bears GM struck again. This time he moved up from #52 overall to #39 in the 2nd round to select Teven Jenkins out of Oklahoma State.
Expectations are he will be the team’s new left tackle following the release of Charles Leno. Considering many had a 1st round grade on Jenkins? That is a potentially huge acquisition. The same could happen in 2022 as the Bears still have their 2nd and 3rd round picks that year as well. By 2023? They’ll be back in the 1st round. Hopefully with a young quarterback who is coming into his own.
Yes, there are risks involved, but calculated and logical ones.
Justin Fields is the sort of talent who can turn a franchise around. Somebody you can ride for 10-15 years if the light goes on as hoped. In this day and age where quarterbacks are everything? There is rarely a price not worth paying to get one. Pace and head coach Matt Nagy understands this. They’ve understood it for a long time. If the Bears are going to get where they want them to go, it will require a difference-maker under center.