For those hungry for intrigue this off-season, we bring you the absolute best-case scenario, playing out during Sunday’s early games.
The Bears secured the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft thanks to a Texans win over the hapless Colts and a Bears loss to the Vikings on Sunday. The most valuable asset in any draft, and this draft in particular, is a quarterback. In this case Bryce Young from Alabama. The Bears already have a quarterback. Unless they don’t. As the draft order stands, at least six teams in the top 10 need quarterbacks.
While Occam’s razor tells us that the simplest solution is almost always the right one, Fr. William of Ockham was never close to seeing an NFL season. Here, in this league, mid-season owners hire their TV best friends and cheer on skilled coaches. People are poking for no goddamn reason, dropping 31 points in the fourth quarter of a losing year with no playoff prospects. The NFL makes so little sense that only the people who understand it, cover it, and depend on it for a living can soberly pass off its machinations as something normal.
So I don’t think the bears are going to just wait patiently until draft day, pick the best player on the board and throw up their hands. At least it will be weird.
Having Fields on the list means there will be additional intrigue over what the bears are doing with the No. 1 pick.
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Among the scenarios we could imagine in the coming months:
• The bears may reaffirm their faith in Justin Fields and open the No. 1 to a bidding war. The Texans, who currently hold the No. 2, 12, and 34 picks in the draft and six picks in the top 104, could potentially battle the Colts (No. 4 and four picks in the top 106), Seahawks (No. 5 and 20 and six picks in the Top 122), Raiders (No. 7 and four picks in the Top 109), Falcons (No. 8 and five picks in the Top 113), or Panthers (No. 9 and five picks in the Top 114). Given the scarcity of the position, we could see an aggressive push to climb to #1.
• As an extension of this idea, we could see a surprising maneuver by a team outside the top 10 when the free hand doesn’t work in their favour. The Jets, Commanders, Titans, Buccaneers, Ravens and Giants all face daunting questions of position and possess the ability to win now depending on who’s under the middle.
• The Bears could instead remain calm and choose not to reaffirm their faith in Fields, prompting vague speculation about what they might do with the election, which would be a real test of a manager’s finesse for a first-time head coach at GM.
• The Bears could legitimately pick Young or any of the other top quarterbacks in the draft, which would immediately raise questions about whether they view Fields as the long-term answer, much like the Raiders opened the door for Derek Carr to fall during the Jon Gruden -era by rating Kyler Murray (and Tom Brady and pretty much every other quarterback available).
• The Bears could just pick a No. 1 quarterback and keep Fields and leave the media circus to rush training camp this summer as if it were opening the Waste Management Open for the best legitimate QB battle of the offseason since Tim Tebow vs. Mark Sanchez.
• The Bears could open the door to a potential trade from Fields, which seems absolutely the least realistic scenario, but needs to be watched as Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus didn’t draft the QB in year two and are now in capable of potentially drafting a franchise quarterback of his own.
It’s hard to believe the Cardinals only drafted Murray four years ago. In the months leading up to the draft, the franchise did a terrible job of hiding its displeasure with incumbent starter Josh Rosen and his love for Murray as a player. It led to a ridiculously flimsy attempt at subterfuge before Arizona eventually rose in position and handed Rosen away for pocket money.
This is not to say that Fields is Rosen, nor that the Bears are the Cardinals. But it’s proof that, given the runway that takes months to prepare the visuals and logistics of a franchise-changing move in the draft, even the most seasoned PR nutcases can fall flat on their face.
The Bears have an opportunity to get out of this much better armored franchise, flush with both picks and $125 million in cap space and enough equity to turn their defenses into a deathtrap like we saw Eberflus in Indianapolis. Despite their losing record, they managed to legitimize Fields to the point where the general public sees superstar potential. It’s, as we’ve found countless times this season, the rare circumstance that a team can end up finishing No. 1, didn’t have to tank naked to do it, and can still end up injecting more hope and less cynicism into their fanbase than too beginning of the season.
You also have a chance to melt all that goodwill if you don’t handle this golden ticket properly. We, the football crowd, are eagerly awaiting the results.