Bears’ offseason: Trade Fields or No. 1 NFL draft pick?

While the Super Bowl is on everybody’s minds, I have to admit I’ve found myself thinking about the offseason of an NFL team that was out of playoff contention nearly all season. The most important choice any team will make over the next few months belongs to the Bears, who have the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft after trading with the Panthers before last year’s draft. In a quarterback class that could see a handful of prospects come off the board in Round 1, Chicago is in position to start the QB carousel.

Depending on whom you ask, though, the Bears might already have their quarterback of the future. As tantalizing as potential top picks Drake Maye or Caleb Williams might be in a Chicago uniform, Justin Fields’ highlight reel is as eye-popping and exciting as that of any other signal-caller. Fields has flashed big-play ability since being drafted 11th overall in 2021, but he also has struggled for consistency and hasn’t stayed healthy. If you’re a Fields supporter, you probably blame that on a subpar supporting cast and coaching staff. If you’re a skeptic, you pin most of it on Fields, who has started 38 NFL games.

I’m not here to evaluate Fields, Maye, Williams or any of the other quarterbacks in this class. Instead, I want to weigh the options available to Bears general manager Ryan Poles and try to get a sense of what history suggests he should do with the top pick. To get there, we need to figure out what Fields’ future would look like in a Chicago uniform, how much the Bears would get in a trade for Fields or the No. 1 pick, and how much surplus value each pick is likely to present to the team.

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Should the Bears trade Fields and keep the pick, or should they go forward with the fourth-year quarterback and rebuild around him? Let’s run through Chicago’s options and see what stands out:

Jump to a section:
What a deal for the pick could look like
Eight trade offers for the top pick
Should Chicago add a player in the trade?
How a Fields extension might work
Value of keeping Fields, trading the pick
Five teams that could trade for Fields
Should Chicago take a non-QB at No. 1?

OPTION 1: KEEP FIELDS, TRADE THE PICK

We’ll start with the option of working with the incumbent. If the Bears are still in love with Fields and don’t feel strongly about any of the quarterbacks in the 2024 draft class, they could hold onto him and try to help him by trading this pick to one of the teams desperate to add a passer. If there’s any team that feels absolutely certain it needs to add one specific QB from this class, the only way for it to get there is to call the Bears.

What should the Bears expect to get in return for the No. 1 pick?

Let’s use trades up to the top of the draft for quarterbacks in previous years under the rookie slotting system to get a sense of what the Bears should expect to get in return. Of course, if teams are more infatuated with Williams or Maye, a trade could bear more than it did in the past, but teams making offers to Chicago will use past deals as a starting point.

As I evaluate these deals, I’m using heavily regressed expectations for each pick from both the Jimmy Johnson and Chase Stuart draft charts, which is to say I’m treating future picks as if they’ll generally fall in the middle of each round. The trades made by the Texans (the Deshaun Watson deal and the move for Laremy Tunsil) and Broncos (Russell Wilson) in recent years show us we can’t assume a pick will fall at the top or the bottom of a round. On the other hand, I’m not docking the value of future picks, since teams making these deals are typically years away from contending.