(670 The Score) To be honest, I kind of hope you don’t read this. (Editor’s note: *loud, confused scream*.) I hope that you spend your Friday afternoon sitting blissfully in Air & Water Show traffic, glowing with a level of exuberance that can only be felt after the Bears won not one but two preseason games.
I hope that while scrolling Twitter as you wait in line for the bathroom at happy hour, you see this take, roll your eyes and double-check to make sure you’re not following me anymore. You don’t need this negativity in your life, especially as you enjoy the last four tolerable days of Chicago weather. Go be young and wild and free – this take, like every autumnal activity you're starting to plan, can wait. And if you’re still reading at this point, my guess is it’s because the happy hour bathroom line is really just that long or you’re waiting to find the right paragraph to screenshot and use as the basis for a tweet thread about how half-baked and dumb this argument is. They’re coming! Don’t worry.
I’m sorry, but the Bears need to trade star linebacker Roquan Smith. And actually, maybe "need" is too strong of a word – but the Bears definitely should trade Smith. I don’t get the usual contrarian rush that I so frequently crave by saying this – as one of the fortunate few who get to pay their bills by watching Bears football, the idea of watching Deer Park and Lake Zurich and Chicago’s own Jack Sanborn instead of Smith doesn’t exactly thrill me the way it thrills, let’s say, every television producer and content head in the greater Chicagoland area. I’m also *extremely* aware that this take aligns me with Colin Cowherd, which is something I’ll be more willing to unpack publicly when my therapist and I have agreed I’m ready to.
The most confusing part of this Smith saga, to me at least, is that there doesn’t feel like one crystal-clear reason why he should be traded. Hold-outs (or I guess hold-ins, whatever) certainly aren't a new phenomenon at NFL training camps, and this one definitely isn’t grounds to send him to Denver, Seattle or Dallas on its own. There’s the whole "he publicly asked to be traded" component which, yeah, fair – that does seem like a good reason to trade someone. The thing about bluffing, though, is that sometimes it actually doesn't work. I mean, who hasn’t told their employer a tiny, self-advocating fib only to find yourself immediately at the whims of some excessively vindictive and retaliatory behavior? As the expression goes, this is the part where Smith finds out.
To break away from Cowherd just a little bit (as a treat), I really don’t think the Bears would be pushing off into uncharted waters by trading away a star defensive player. General manager Ryan Poles has quite literally already done that this offseason. As much as I personally would love watching Poles operating with open disdain for defensive football in the city of Chicago, that’s a level of shade and pettiness best reserved for the team’s PR staff. Also, it doesn’t really seem like the Bears’ new offense has a great handle on the "scoring points" part of the game yet, so pulling a full Billy Beane on the group that’ll keep them in shouting distance during early season games doesn’t quite seem like paradigm-shifting move that it’s being made out to be. Making your defense worse to own the Boomers plays great on Twitter, and I'm fully here for it, but it probably doesn’t land quite the same with the 99-year-old matriarch of the NFL who also happens to sign your checks.
The Bears should trade Roquan Smith simply because it makes good football sense to trade Roquan Smith. Before you can #ChangeTheGame, you have to #CatchUpToItFirst. I have seen every "Yeah and that draft pick could be Roquan Smith!" tweet and they’re all correct! It’s true! The Bears could, potentially, use one of those picks on an inside linebacker who ends up being terrific. And then when that linebacker wants to get paid $20 million a year, they should trade him too! Smarter people than me have pointed out that, for the most part, big-time contracts for linebackers don't age well. Maybe Smith’s won't – he is, like everyone has said ten thousand times, a very good linebacker. Bears fans should brace for the fact that they might have to watch him dominate the Saturday Skills Challenge at the Pro Bowl wearing another team’s visor.
Without Smith, the Bears would look pretty weak at linebacker. Maybe that would help distract from how weak they look on the offensive line? Or at wide receiver? I dunno. It just feels like, specifically this year, looking weak at linebacker doesn’t really matter? (This is a good paragraph for those tweet threads, just FYI.) I will forever adore former general manager Ryan Pace’s willingness to recklessly spend his billionaire boss’ money, but one of his enduring flaws was his failure to know what kind of team he really had.
With Smith, Poles has his best chance yet to prove that he has the requisite self-awareness that his job requires – that his team, at this point, needs what Roquan Smith can get them off the field more than what he can give them on it.
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.
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