Bears QB Justin Fields finally leave today with the following reasons..
The subject has been impossible to escape this offseason: the Chicago Bears’ quarterback dilemma.
The debate was born as just a whisper when the Bears’ flawed, but decidedly talented quarterback Justin Fields got off to a slow start to begin the 2023 season. Talk only ramped up in volume and frequency when Fields dislocated his thumb in Week 6 against the Vikings, with his naysayers using the injury as evidence that the team needed a change at quarterback. Fields’ defenders bluntly countered that there was only a slight chance that the Panthers’ 2024 first-round pick, which the Bears acquired in a trade of last year’s No. 1 pick, would turn into the first selection of the upcoming draft.
By season’s end, the dream had become reality: The Bears had sole possession of the first overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft. Chicago’s 2023 season had reached its end, meaning the formerly quiet discussion roared into a debate that would become the defining topic of the Bears’ 2024 offseason: Will they draft USC’s prolific Caleb Williams or keep Fields?
Bears general manager Ryan Poles has been tight lipped about what the organization will ultimately do with the No. 1 pick, but recent reports and offseason happenings indicate that Chicago will re-roll the quarterback dice once again and draft presumptive top pick Caleb Williams in late April. That would mean the Fields experiment will have run its course, and the Bears will almost certainly attempt to trade him to another team so that he can have a fresh start.
The matter of who will take on the deadly dual-threat signal caller and part with valuable draft assets is the question we’ll be answering today. We have compiled five teams who are legitimate candidates to land Fields, and we’ll be ranking them from which team is least to most likely to make a deal.
Let’s go over what needs to happen for the Bears to accept a trade. If the team opts to trade Fields, Poles said they’d like to get a deal in place as quickly as possibly, reiterating they want to “do right” by Fields. NFL insider Adam Schefter shed light on what Chicago would receive in a deal, equating his trade value to the likes of other quarterbacks Sam Darnold and Alex Smith, the former netting the Jets a second, fourth and sixth-round pick and the latter getting the 49ers two second-round picks. It certainly sounds like the Bears will ask for at least a second-round pick, with picks from later rounds being thrown in the mix.
With the groundwork laid out, let’s get to the main event. Here are the five most likely teams to trade for Fields, ranked from least to most likely.
