(670 The Score) In hindsight, maybe we all should've been a bit less apathetic about the Bears giving up 49 points Sunday. Barely 24 hours after we all kind of signed off on the idea that it’s OK to have a terrible defense this season, general manager Ryan Poles called our bluff and traded star linebacker Roquan Smith to the Ravens for a second-round pick and a fifth-round pick. For those counting at home, both of the team’s defensive captains from Week 1 are gone. If that’s not job security, I’m not sure what is.
There’s so much nuance to a trade of this size, but it feels important to state the obvious first, just for the record: Trading Smith makes the Bears worse. A whole bunch of people, myself included, would argue that it makes them significantly worse, but that’s where it starts to get awfully subjective. Ultimately, does that even matter? The Vikings are going to have the division wrapped up by Thanksgiving, and the Bears are more ironically "in the hunt" than they are statistically. When you’re finishing third in the division either way, what real difference does it make to have the 15th-best defensive DVOA with Smith rather than, say, the 20th-best one without him? Plus, how many games did Smith have this season in which you constantly noticed how well he was playing? Players on non-contending teams usually wait until, like, December to punt on a bad season, but general managers – especially ones with as much work to do as Poles – can’t. (Mostly because of the whole, you know, trade deadline factor. But it’s also just bad business.)
I’ve been banging this drum for a while now (everyone loves a braggy lede right?), but trading Smith was the right move. Somewhere around the time it went public that the Bears’ fifth-year, off-ball linebacker wasn’t thrilled with the way the new front office conducted business, his value shifted. In that moment, he became a final puzzle piece stuck on a team that’s just now opening the box – and through that lens, it became easier to understand and empathize with his complaints about how the Bears weren’t negotiating in good faith. They probably weren’t! They didn’t have to! The NFL is (for the most part) a tremendous product, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a shitty business. Once it became clear that the Bears weren’t ever all that interested in hearing Smith out, the next steps always felt pretty obvious.
There’s also something refreshing about the conviction that Poles operates with. While it’s easy to lump "trading both defensive captains in a span of six days" together, when the shock value subsides, we’re left with two moves that don’t look particularly similar. Obviously there’s the compensation difference, but even The Precious Narratives are somewhat far apart. Smith’s career is just getting started, which is, uh, not the case for edge rusher Robert Quinn, whom the Bears sent to the Eagles last week. Trading the latter felt like a no-brainer – there was never any debate on whether Quinn could be a foundational member of future Poles teams. But moving the former? Putting the contract negotiations and positional value aside for a moment, it’s objectively way more difficult to justify trading a player of Smith’s profile. Especially in Chicago, there probably wouldn’t have been too much bad press for throwing him $95 million and giving an entire generation of fans their own legendary, lifetime Bears linebacker. It’s not like the Bears are hurting for cap space right now either. It might not be a shining example of modern team-building, but since when has that bothered the people upstairs at Halas Hall?
Beside the last month of quarterback Justin Fields’ performances, maybe the most exciting development that this team has going for it right now is the fact that Poles clearly knows what his long-term vision is and what it takes to get there, no matter how heavy-handed chairman George McCaskey’s press conference hints are. If nothing else, fans should be encouraged by that. After that, they should probably find something else to watch when the Bears are on defense.
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.
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