Ryan Poles’ two biggest mistakes were spurred on by last year’s trade deadline.
On Halloween, the Bears general manager agreed to trade linebacker Roquan Smith, who had published a scathing letter arguing for a new contract during training camp, to the Ravens. The next day, hours before the league’s deadline, he traded a second-round pick to the Steelers for Chase Claypool.
The mercurial receiver was far more trouble than he was worth, catching 18 passes for 191 yards, angering the coaching staff with a lack of hustle and the front office with comments he wasn’t being used properly. The Bears traded him to the Dolphins last month for a pittance: the right to move up from a 2025 seventh-round pick to a sixth-rounder.
Smith — who signed the deal he always wanted with the Ravens toward the end of last season — remains one of the best linebackers in the world. Pro Football Focus ranks him the sixth.
The fallout from the Smith trade — and one that moved Robert Quinn, the team’s single-season sack leader, five days earlier — rippled through the Bears for months. The Bears went 0-10 without Quinn and 0-9 without Smith. The day they traded Quinn, the Bears’ defense ranked seventh in points allowed. The rest of the way, they were dead last.
“It was pretty huge,” defensive lineman Justin Jones said the day after the season ended. “I don’t want to say too much about it. It was a pretty big loss — I’m not gonna lie.”
That should be enough to make Poles skittish about making any moves before this year’s deadline, which strikes at 3 p.m. Tuesday. His 2-6 Bears aren’t contenders and don’t figure to add players, and Poles knows first-hand what effect subtraction from an already-thin roster could have at Halas Hall.
Cornerback Jaylon Johnson and receiver Darnell Mooney are in the final years of their rookie contracts. Both want extensions.
Johnson is young — at 24, he’s only three months older than Bears rookie cornerback Terell Smith — and is the rare Bears player who’d make an immediate impact for a 2023 playoff team. The Bears would likely need at least a second-rounder back but shouldn’t be in the business of trading good young players like Johnson — or, last year, Smith.
Mooney would be hard to trade, given the Bears’ lack of depth behind DJ Moore.
Were Poles to add, he’d have to make the same calculation he did when he traded for Claypool — that a lack of free-agent depth in the upcoming offseason justified a trade. The Bears need pass-rushers more than any team in the sport, and the Commanders are said to have two available: Chase Young and Montez Sweat. The free agent class for defensive ends, though, could be robust: Danielle Hunter, Josh Allen, Brian Burns and the two Commanders could all be available in March.
In an interview with the team’s ESPN1000 pregame show, Poles downplayed the notion he’d make a move — but left himself an out.
“As it sits right now, I think it’s going to be fairly quiet for us,” Poles said. “But at the same we’re going to be opportunistic in taking information and seeing [whether] it works for our organization both short term and long term.”
Coach Matt Eberflus said Monday that the team’s level of activity is “up to Ryan and his crew.” He’s cognizant of the feelings that rippled through the locker room last year.
“I would just say that it’s hurtful — it’s like, ‘Wow, this guy or that guy,’” he said. “So you’ve got to be ahead of it. If you’re gonna do that, you have to be ahead of it and explain to the players why and what happened, and making sure you’re ahead of it ahead of time the best you can. That’s what we learned [last year].”
We’ll know by Tuesday, though, what Poles learned from last year.
