Bears general manager Ryan Poles, left, watches players warm up before a game against the Packers on Sept. 18, 2022, in Green Bay. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune, John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)
When the Chicago Bears traded away their best player, linebacker Roquan Smith, for future draft capital, they sent a message that the focus for the remainder of this season shouldn’t be on wins and losses.
Few probably were looking at the standings anyway, even after a 33-14 thumping of the New England Patriots in Week 7 improved the Bears to 3-4 and left them an upset at Dallas from being in early playoff discussion. The Bears reached the postseason at 8-8 in 2020, the first year of the expanded 14-team field, and the NFC’s No. 7 seed was 9-8 last season.
After returning from New England, general manager Ryan Poles started a sell-off, trading defensive end Robert Quinn to the Philadelphia Eagles for a fourth-round pick. A 49-29 blowout loss to the Cowboys followed in Week 8.
Then the Bears shipped Smith to the Baltimore Ravens on Monday for second- and fifth-round picks in 2023 and veteran linebacker A.J. Klein, subtracting the NFL’s leading tackler from a defense that’s 31st in the league against the run and on third down and hasn’t been generating a pass rush.
Poles turned around and traded his own second-rounder to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Tuesday for wide receiver Chase Claypool, adding help for improving second-year quarterback Justin Fields.
Now the Bears are 3-5 with seemingly conflicting goals for the remainder of the season as the Miami Dolphins (5-3) come to Soldier Field on Sunday. Tanking — intentionally losing to improve draft positioning — is a dirty word in sports and clearly not something the Bears are interested in entertaining.
The NFL completed a six-month investigation of the Dolphins earlier this year, stripping them of a first-round pick in 2023 and a third-rounder in 2024 for tampering with Tom Brady and Sean Payton.
Commissioner Roger Goodell stopped short of punishing the Dolphins and owner Stephen Ross for tanking, even though the report stated: “On a number of occasions during the 2019 season, Mr. Ross expressed his belief that the Dolphins’ position in the upcoming 2020 draft should take priority over the team’s win-loss record. These comments, which he took to be suggestions that he lose games, troubled Coach (Brian) Flores and led him to express his concerns in writing to senior club executives, each of whom assured Coach Flores that everyone, including Mr. Ross, supported him in building a winning culture in Miami.”
After trading away Smith — who is in the final year of his contract and couldn’t reach agreement on an extension in August — and prioritizing draft capital, what’s more important to the Bears in the second half of the season: winning or their draft standing? The answer is winning, but how in the world do you sell that to the players when Smith’s locker is empty and the draft picks replacing him don’t arrive for six months?
“I addressed it with the leadership council,” coach Matt Eberflus said before practice Wednesday. “I addressed it with the team today. You can’t just pretend nothing happened. You’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to look each other in the eye. You’ve got to tell each other the truth and put a vision in front of them with where we are going and why we are doing that.”
Poles said Tuesday: “This locker room is competitive and they don’t see this as, ‘These moves happened so let’s throw in the white towel and forget about everything else.’ They just want to grind it out and they want to win. I don’t think anyone that’s watched our games, any single one of them, even the ones we don’t win or struggle in, they don’t see the effort, the competition, the fire. Everything we stand for is out on the field and we’re going to continue to do that.”
If the draft were based on the current standings, Tankathon.com has the Bears with the 12th pick. They’re one of seven 3-5 teams in the range between Nos. 7 and 13. The remaining schedule is the sixth-most difficult in the league, with future opponents combining for a 38-29 record (.567 winning percentage) despite two games against the bottom-feeding Detroit Lions (1-6).
ESPN projects the Bears to wind up with the No. 6 pick and gives them a 2.9% chance to have the No. 1 pick, 33% chance to be in the top five and 72.3% chance to be in the top 10.
“It’s such an interesting predicament,” a veteran personnel official said. “At the end of the day, they know they are not going to win the Super Bowl. They are not going to make a deep run in the playoffs. They are probably not going to make the playoffs. The GM and the coach are in the first year of their tenure, and at some point you were brought in to turn around the franchise and have success in the future.
“So the way to have success in the future in this sport sometimes means you’re going to take a hit in the present. At the same time, you want to win. You’re trying to build and sustain a culture, but you’re also trying to build and sustain a roster. They almost don’t go hand in hand.”
The Bears would love to see Fields continue to grow in the final two months of the season. In the last two games he was 30 of 44 passing for 330 yards with three touchdowns and one interception and rushed for 142 yards and two scores.
The more success Fields experiences, the more his confidence will grow — as will the belief of the team’s decision makers as the Bears begin laying plans for a crucial offseason with a load of salary-cap space and now eight draft picks.
Of course, the higher the Bears pick in each round, the better positioned they will be to add impact players. Poles’ first draft class netted three current starters: strong safety Jaquan Brisker, cornerback Kyler Gordon and left tackle Braxton Jones.
“I am sure it’s happened before where teams wanted to lose and tried to lose,” the personnel man said. “I have certainly never been a part of it. I can see the pull to do it, but it’s just not the way people in this business are wired. Maybe some owners, like the Stephen Ross thing. Did that happen? I could see it. I wouldn’t criticize it. But no player is going to want to try to lose.”
In those honest, face-to-face conversations Eberflus described, all he can do is tell players he will do everything in his power to put the team in the best position possible, minus two guys who started the season as captains. If Eberflus’ message is construed as anything short of that, he would lose the locker room faster than Smith can shoot a gap in pursuit of a running back.
“Everybody on the team, including the coaches, we want to win every game,” Fields said. “Nobody’s waving the white flag. We’re all attacking each day trying to be better. Guys on the defensive side of the ball, they’re going to have to step up. We all talked about it. We all kind of went through it.”
Cornerback Jaylon Johnson said there wasn’t much explanation needed. Veterans understand what happened. They’re being asked to compete in the latter stages of a full roster teardown. There’s a good lesson here for younger players. They’re auditioning for the Bears and 31 other teams during the next nine games.
“In terms of a speech or anything, everything is pretty much the same,” Johnson said. “The mission is the mission. If you’re new into the league, maybe it’s difficult to process. If you’ve been in this business long enough, you’ve seen some things go on. It’s not up to us or something we can control. It doesn’t do us any good worrying about it in terms of the thought process or the why. That’s not going to help.
“Just keep pushing. Keep trying to get better individually and find ways to get victories.”
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Originally published at Tribune News Service