For those starving for intrigue this offseason, we present to you the absolute best-case scenario coming to fruition during Sunday’s early games.
The Bears have secured the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, thanks to a Texans win over the hapless Colts and a Bears loss to the Vikings on Sunday. The most valuable commodity in any draft, and especially this draft, is a quarterback. In this case, Alabama’s Bryce Young. The Bears already have a quarterback. Unless they don’t. As the current draft order stands, at least six teams in the top 10 need quarterbacks.
While Occam’s razor tells us that the simplest solution is almost always the correct one, Fr. William of Ockham was never around to see an NFL season. Here, in this league, owners hire their best friends off television during the middle of the season and fire capable coaches. People punt for no damn reason, down 31 points in the fourth quarter of a lost year with no playoff prospects. The NFL makes such little sense that only the people who understand it, cover it and depend on it for their livelihood can soberly pass off its machinations as anything resembling normal.
So, I don’t think the Bears are just going to patiently wait until draft day, take the best player on the board and throw up their hands. At the very least, it’s going to get weird.
Having Fields on the roster means there will be added intrigue over what the Bears do with the No. 1 pick.
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Among the scenarios that we could conceivably entertain in the coming months:
• The Bears could affirm their faith in Justin Fields and open up the No. 1 pick to a bidding war. The Texans, who currently hold the Nos. 2, 12 and 34 picks in the draft, and six picks in the top 104, could find themselves possibly warring against the the Colts (No. 4 and four picks in the top 106), Seahawks (Nos. 5 and 20, and six picks in the top 122), Raiders (No. 7 and four picks in the top 109), Falcons (No. 8 and five picks in the top 113) or Panthers (No. 9 and five picks in the top 114). Given the scarcity at the position, we could see an aggressive push to climb up to No. 1.
• As an extension of that idea, we could see a surprising maneuver from some team outside the top 10 if free agency doesn’t shape up in its favor. The Jets, Commanders, Titans, Buccaneers, Ravens and Giants are all facing monumental questions at the position and possess the ability to win now depending who is under center.
• The Bears could stay quiet instead, choosing not to affirm their faith in Fields, in order to vaguely invite speculation as to what they might do with the pick, which would be a true test of managerial finesse for a first-time head coach and GM.
• The Bears could evaluate Young or any of the other top quarterbacks in the draft legitimately, which would immediately raise questions as to whether they view Fields as the long-term answer, much in the way the Raiders opened the door for an ouster of Derek Carr during the Jon Gruden era by evaluating Kyler Murray (and Tom Brady, and just about every other quarterback who was available).
• The Bears could just take a quarterback No. 1 and keep Fields, leaving the media circus to rush training camp this summer like it was the opening of the Waste Management Open for the best legitimate QB battle of the offseason since Tim Tebow vs. Mark Sanchez.
• The Bears could open the door for a potential trade of Fields, which seems like the absolute least realistic scenario, but has to be kept in mind given that Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus didn’t draft the second-year QB and are now in a position to potentially draft their own franchise quarterback.
It’s hard to believe the Cardinals drafted Murray just four years ago. In the months leading up to the draft, the franchise did a horrendous job of masking its displeasure with incumbent starter Josh Rosen and its love of Murray as a player. It led to a laughably thin attempt at subterfuge before Arizona ultimately upgraded at the position and dealt Rosen away for pocket change.
This is not to say that Fields is Rosen, nor that the Bears are the Cardinals. But it is evidence that, given months of runway to prepare the optics and logistics of a franchise-altering move in the draft, even the most experienced of PR spinners can fall flat on their faces.
The Bears have an opportunity to come out of this so much better armored as a franchise, flush with both picks and $125 million in cap space, and enough equity to transform their defense into a death trap like we saw Eberflus run in Indianapolis. Despite their losing record, they managed to legitimize Fields to the point where the larger public sees superstar potential. It is, as we’ve noted countless times this season, the rare circumstance where a team ended up with the No. 1 pick, didn’t have to nakedly tank in order to do so, and can still end up providing more hope and less cynicism for its fan base than when the season started.
They also have a chance to let all that goodwill melt if they don’t handle this golden ticket properly. We, the football viewing public, eagerly await the results.
