ASK THE REPORTER BRAD BIGGS
I wonder what effect Roquan Smith not having an agent had on this situation? Perhaps if he had an agent to take some of the emotion out of the negotiations, he’d still be a Bear? — Brian. C.
Fair question and we’ll never know. I know going back more than a year ago, the Bears were hopeful Smith would hire representation, and he never did. That’s his decision and it made the entire process more challenging.
“It does make it (pause) just harder,” GM Ryan Poles said Tuesday when asked about Smith working without an agent.
Has there ever been a Bears total teardown and rebuild of the current magnitude? I’ve been a fan since Bill Wade was the quarterback and I can’t recall one. — Tony R.
That’s a hard question for me to answer because my working knowledge from covering the team goes back only to 2001. Wade was slinging it for the Bears before I was born. I’m inclined to say no, but I would point out that only in the last couple of years have we seen real player movement around the NFL trade deadline. For years you would get only a handful of deals, most of them small in nature, in the week or so leading up to the deadline. A wave of younger, more aggressive GMs has changed that approach.
The Bears haven’t just traded off some of their best — and most expensive — players in Khalil Mack, Robert Quinn and Roquan Smith, they’ve churned the roster. If my count is accurate, only 19 players remain from the Ryan Pace era. That number could be below a dozen by this time next year. Add the trades to the constant roster movement and you get a widespread teardown.
The key to the immediate future, of course, rests on the performance of one remaining piece from the previous regime: quarterback Justin Fields. It sets up for a fascinating offseason.
How patient should fans be in 2 0 2 3 ? If Poles’ plan was to work with salary-cap space and draft capital in ‘2 3 , and we’ve seen teams like the Bengals win that way quickly, he should have a lot of pressure to execute, right? — @ david_nordby
Are you forgetting how many years and decades the Bengals wandered through the NFL forest on a journey that led them, well, nowhere? Without having any idea what shape the roster will take next season, it’s difficult to make any grand predictions, but a good deal of patience is required. I can’t speak for him, but I can’t imagine Poles looked at this job as a one-year turnaround. The Bears need multiple draft classes to get up and running at a high level, and they had only three picks in the top 167 in April.
If Fields takes a huge step forward over the remainder of this season, that would be a good reason to raise expectations a couple of notches for next season, but if you’re dreaming big for 2023, you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. Think of it this way: How many core starters will the Bears have at the end of this season? They need to bring in a lot of new players and can reasonably make only so many moves in free agency and have only so many draft picks. I don’t think you want to see a massive spending splurge in free agency either. The “Dream Team” didn’t work out so well in Philadelphia in 2011.
The Bears might be able to get into playoff contention sooner than some believe, but there’s a difference in sneaking in as a No. 6 or No. 7 seed and being one of the top teams in the conference that can compete for a championship annually. Look at how stocked the rosters of the Buffalo Bills, Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles are. Heck, look at the San Francisco 49ers too. There’s talent and depth across the board. That takes time and a lot of work to build. So I believe patience will be required throughout the 2023 season.