Let’s, all together, walk into the center of the storm, a place many have decided not to visit in this sh**show that has become the Bears’ 0-2 season.
Deeper into it than Alan Williams’ exit as defensive coordinator. Way deeper than quarterback Justin Fields’ mutiny-adjacent blame on the coaching staff handcuffing his ability to be “him” on the field. Deeper into it than any preseason expectations and this being the worst stint of professional football this city has possibly ever seen.
Depth level: Roquan Smith deep. Baltimore Raven Roquan Smith. Former Bear Roquan Smith. Perennial Pro Bowl linebacker Roquan Smith. The newly minted $100 million star. The eye of our storm.
Since he has been gone, the Bears have been done. The locker room hasn’t been the same, the coaches have been searching for answers, and the organization hasn’t a clue what to do. A trade that brought them replacement linebacker A.J. Klein and two draft picks (one that turned into Gervon Dexter, the other Noah Sewell) — and, essentially, the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, which is a whole extra story — has affected this team in ways it will never admit.
Smith, who, despite holding out during 2022 training camp as part of a dispute before that season, led the NFL in tackles when he was traded. The Bears’ current top tackler, Tremaine Edmunds, with 23 total, is tied for sixth. The next-to-last time we saw Smith in Wilber Marshall’s old uniform was the last time the Bears won a game.
Check The Thime: Oct. 24, 2022. Last victory. Versus New England, 33-14. Roquan: eight tackles, four assists. One sack. One interception. The next week, trade talks get heavy. Contract agreement can’t get made. Smith checks out. Ryan Poles starts making calls and answering the phone. Oct. 30, 2022. Last game for Smith. Versus Dallas. Skid begins — 49-29 loss. Roquan: four tackles, zero assists, zero sacks, zero interceptions. Traded the next day. Locker room shook. Culture lost. Team ain’t won a game since.
Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist (at least not when it comes to this), and with sports, I try not to think like Charlie Brooker while he’s creating episodes of “Black Mirror.” But when there’s a pinpoint point that hasn’t really been addressed, examined or accepted into some form of consideration as to where, when, why and how something (anything!) might have been the reason for our current existence, then extreme-measured thought usually comes off as the necessary option. Especially when dealing with the Bears.
That trade simply kick-started it all. Not Smith’s demand for the trade, but the trade itself. We can do all the data-crunching and numerical analysis we want — it’s still going to bring us back to that decision as the simple common denominator. The Bears are 0-12 since the game after the game they decided to trade him.
Now I’m not stupid enough to not think the Nov. 1, 2022, trade-deadline deal for receiver Chase Claypool for a third-round pick, trading defensive end Robert Quinn the week before and the offseason loss of running back David Montgomery haven’t also played a huge role in what’s happened to the Bears. It’s kind of difficult for the stars to align when a team gets rid of all its stars. But in Smith, the Bears got rid of a “him” who just happened to be at the time their only Pro Bowl player, a team captain, only 25 years old, who was playing the one position that has defined everything the organization has built itself on. A “him” who ended up getting the money and more (five years, $100 million when he was apparently seeking only $20 million per season to stay here) from his current team, which saw his value in a way this Bears front-office regime apparently didn’t.
Coincidence vs. mistake. That’s the GM question. That’s the chairman question. Y’all’s call. That’s our question to the Bears as to whether that single trade played a signature and irreversible role in why we are here with them now. If the Bulls are never going to live down letting Phil Jackson go, or letting Tom Thibodeau off the hook for his decision to play Derrick Rose when he did when Pooh got injured, if the Cubs still have to answer for never truly fighting to keep Theo Epstein here, if the Blackhawks are forever going to be haunted for their decision to replace Corey Crawford — all of which those organizations have never fully recovered from — then placing this theory of the Bears trading Smith last season is straight fair game. And all’s fair in love and underachieving football.
For the Bears, we all know the current effect is the result of more than this one cause. Zero interceptions and only one sack (thank you, Yannick Ngakoue) this season is not on the trading of Smith. The punter having more punting yards than the quarterback has passing yards (444 for Trenton Gill, 427 for Fields) is not on dealing Smith. A QB who rushed for more than 1,100 yards last season had three yards in Game 2, and his QBR is at its highest (85.2 last season) when he’s using his legs as an option and an outlet, not when he’s trying to be something the Bears want him to become that is something he’s not (kinda what Fields was alluding to in his retracted sound bite). That’s not on trading Smith. Watching Jalen Carter in an Eagles uniform play like a star already when the Bears had two chances to select him in the draft is not on the Smith trade. None of it correlates. And that’s the point: Maybe we need to all pull back and long-distance-view this as the possible root cause, as the “where it all began,” as opposed to “what it’s all become.” The week-after-week searching for reasons, the excuses and the placing of rotating personal blame is getting exhausting.
Let’s just admit: The trade ruined us.
There’s always a tipping point. And those tipping points are at the center of most of life’s catastrophes. Poles’ decision — however much sense it may have made a year ago — to handle Roquan’s situation the way he did can justifiably be looked at as the beginning of the beginning of why the Bears are where they are today, only four weeks away from a calendar year of winlessness.
There’s a parable floating around anti-analytics circles that is apropos for this theory: Don’t say the math ain’t mathin’ when the math that’s mathin’ is the only math that matters. 0-12 = 0. That is the Bears. I know this is a very “Dude, you reaching” way of looking at this whole disaster. But simple math don’t lie. And sometimes, to make nonsense make sense, we have to go back in time, say, almost an entire year, to see, while standing in the center of it all, how a storm got started in the first place.
