March 10, 2023. Remember that?
Remember that fateful Friday afternoon when Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles pulled the trigger on a landmark trade, sending the No. 1 pick in that spring’s NFL draft to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for a world of opportunity?
“I know about it a little bit,” Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams said Wednesday at Halas Hall. “But not too much. I’m obviously grateful it happened and to be a Chicago Bear. But I’m not too deep into the history of what happened.”
Grab a seat then, young man.
That deal, after all, is the reason Williams is the Bears QB1, their hope for a brighter future. Sit back for the snapshot summary.
- The Bears, coming off a 10-game losing streak to end the 2022 season, landed the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft but ultimately decided they wanted to give Justin Fields one more season to prove his worth as the franchise quarterback.
- That meant passing on the top QB prospects in the draft — Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson, Will Levis. But it also offered Poles the opportunity to auction that top pick to the highest bidder.
- And auction Poles did, ultimately agreeing to a deal with the Panthers, who were aggressive in their bid to move from No. 9 to No. 1, hellbent on selecting a quarterback to change the trajectory of their franchise. (Ultimately, they opted for Young.)
- That all-in move by then-Panthers GM Scott Fitterer supplied the Bears with quite the gift basket: standout receiver DJ Moore plus a collection of four picks across three drafts to help revitalize the roster.
- As it would turn out, behind a suspect offensive line, Young was beaten around as a rookie and sacked 62 times in 16 starts as the Panthers floundered to 15 losses. That left them as the worst team in the NFL. Which, of course, meant the Bears inherited the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft. That became the winning lottery ticket they cashed in for Williams, widely lauded as one of the most promising quarterback prospects of the past quarter-century.
By now, Williams is well aware of how the Bears wound up with the pick they used to choose him. But does he know what all the other picks from that trade netted for the Bears?
“Ummm,” Williams said. “Not off the top.”
How does this sound, Caleb? Right tackle Darnell Wright, cornerback Tyrique Stevenson and punter Tory Taylor. In addition to Moore.
“Now I know,” Williams said with a smile. “That’s a good collection of players we have here.”
And just a reminder: The list still isn’t complete.
“There’s still one more to come,” Stevenson said.
Yep. The Bears still have the Panthers’ 2025 second-round pick to use.
“There’s still one more coming, huh?” Taylor said. “That’s crazy.”
Crazy, indeed.
All of that provides the backdrop for Sunday’s Bears-Panthers game at Soldier Field with that high-profile March 2023 trade potentially registering as one of the more lopsided deals in NFL history. It also has left both organizations and their followers in very different places when it comes to digesting the move.
Bears coach Matt Eberflus, for example, didn’t hold back his enthusiasm this week when considering all the building blocks Poles secured for his team with that one shrewd move.
“It’s really remarkable when you think about it,” Eberflus said, “how it all fell together like that. A lot of that is luck. I mean a lot of that you can’t predict. But it’s also putting yourself in position (to capitalize). Ryan Poles and his staff did a great job of that.”
To Eberflus’ point, when Poles pulled the trigger on the trade, there was no way to forecast that the Panthers would nosedive so quickly in 2023, blundering to a league-worst 2-15. In the end, that meant the Bears merely deferred their opportunity to pick at No. 1 by 12 months. And they did so at a time when Williams was considered by many around the league to be a draft jackpot.
Adding to the extraordinary nature of the deal: Young’s rapid flameout in Carolina has been jaw-dropping. Eleven games into his rookie season, the Panthers fired his first coach, Frank Reich. Two games into his second season, his new coach, Dave Canales, benched him for Andy Dalton.
Just 19 months ago, Young was Carolina’s have-to-have guy at the sport’s most important position. Now he’s in the recycling bin waiting for a truck to come by. And Fitterer, the GM who drafted him, was fired nine months ago.
Obviously, there are still layers to this trade conversation before a final verdict can be announced. Above all else, Williams must have a much different growth process in the NFL than Young, a fellow 2022 Heisman Trophy finalist, has had with the Panthers. Williams’ presence in Chicago must turn into high-level production that must then become the catalyst for an extended run of team success. That’s the only way the trade reaches maximum value.
To some extent, Williams’ career achievements also always will be measured against those of Stroud, whom the Bears also passed on drafting in 2023. The Texans quarterback was the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year last season and led Houston to an AFC South championship plus a playoff win.
So, yeah, similar feats will be expected from Williams in the near future.
The Bears also must continue squeezing the most out of Moore, Wright, Stevenson and Taylor. But already, that situation appears to be trending in the right direction.
Moore, coming off a 96-catch, 1,364-yard season during his first year with the Bears, signed a $110 million extension in August that has him under contract through the 2029 season.
Wright is preparing to make his 22nd consecutive start Sunday at Soldier Field and, in flashes, has shown the potential to be a standout offensive tackle for the rest of the decade.
And Stevenson and Taylor? Well, both players already have been instrumental in closing out victories this season.
Taylor’s two fourth-quarter punts Sunday — one a 66-yard bomb, the other a feathery 35-yarder — both pinned the Rams at their 8-yard line. The rookie punter earned NFC Special Teams Player of the Week for those contributions.
In Week 1, Stevenson’s late pick-six against the Tennessee Titans provided the winning score in a 24-17 victory, earning him NFC Defensive Player of the Week honors.
“It’s all part of Poles’ plan,” Stevenson said Thursday with a smile. “I call him ‘The Guru Man.’ Because he knew what it was.”
What it was then was an opportunity for Bears. What it has provided since has been a remarkable infusion of talent.
Said Moore, who was the only known commodity of the trade at the time it was made: “I haven’t really sat down and looked at all the pieces we got. I mean, you can see it. But I don’t really go and think about like, ‘Damn, we really made an impact.’”
On Sunday, the Bears will have four starters plus a standout punter from the trade haul to use against the Panthers. Young, meanwhile, will walk into Soldier Field as a backup with seemingly no real future with the organization that drafted him.
Maybe that’s why Poles was so giddy in the immediate aftermath of the trade, so energized by what it would empower him to do that he was actually having mini-anxiety attacks that the whole scenario wasn’t real. As he hold the Tribune in spring 2023, he spent weeks “waiting for someone — like a bad dream — to rip it back out, like it’s not going through.”
Off all the players who were part of the Bears’ haul from the trade, Stevenson seems to know the details best. He laughed Thursday when recounting the inventory again.
“Honestly, at the end of, last year I thought we were done with DJ and Darnell and me and that was going to be that,” Stevenson said. “Now you add Caleb. Then you add Tory. Then you add somebody else (in 2025) that we’re fixing to grab? Man.”
March 10, 2023. Remember that?
From the Bears’ vantage point, the trade is difficult to look back on with anything but enthusiasm.
“Shoutout to Poles,” Stevenson said. “And sorry to the Panthers.”
