In a shocking move, the Bears are trading linebacker Roquan Smith to the Ravens.
The Bears are getting a second-round pick and a fifth-rounder in return, per a source.
The Bears are also getting linebacker A.J. Klein as a depth piece. The 31-year-old has started 81 games at inside linebacker since 2013 and was signed by the Ravens off the Bills practice squad four weeks ago.
Smith, the team’s best player, is in the final year of his contract. The Bears, though, could have controlled him through the 2024 season by giving him the franchise tag next year and then doing so again.
The linebacker conducted a “hold-in” at the start of the season after he and new general manager Ryan Poles couldn’t hammer out a contract extension. He then demanded a trade, issuing a public statement that said the first-year GM was not negotiating in good faith.
Smith backed off his demand, eventually returning to preseason practices. He said he would focus on the season instead of a new deal. Smith leads the NFL with 83 tackles and was one of the team’s four captains.
“I feel like I’m in the same head space that I was back when I asked [for a trade] — and that was declined,” Smith said last week. “I shift my focus to just being the best guy I can to the guys in the locker room. The best guy to myself and to the loyal fans.”
The trade marks the second-straight big name player that Poles has shipped out of Halas Hall in five days. After trading Robert Quinn, another captain, to the Eagles on Wednesday, Poles listed Smith as one of the leaders could help fill the void on the defensive side of the ball.
Now Smith is gone, too.
Poles’ decision to move him makes it official: he doesn’t feel an inherent obligation to keep players from the Ryan Pace regime. Pace drafted Smith, a Butkus Award-winning linebacker at Georgia, with the eighth overall pick in 2018. He held out during his first-year training camp while his agent argued for protections against how his contract would be affected by the NFL’s new on-field penalty rules. He returned midway through camp but was still limited when the Bears opened the season against the Packers.
Smith eventually parted ways with his agent. He tried to negotiate a deal on his own starting in the spring with a target near the five-year, $98.5 million deal the Colts gave Shaquille Leonard last year.
When the two sides couldn’t reach a deal in August, Smith issued a 343-word public statement in early August that accused Poles of being “focused on taking advantage of me” and asking to be dealt to an “organization that genuinely values what I bring to the table.”
When he returned, though, Smith said he was “betting on himself” and sounded at peace with what was to come. He said a 2023 franchise tag would be a “nice number next year, whatever it is” — and he was right. The tag is expected to be $17.4 million in 2023; he was making $9.7 million this year.
The Bears’ rebuild is now unabashed. They don’t have a sixth-round pick next year but will have two picks in Rounds 2, 4 and 5. For only the second time since they drafted Smith in 2018, they also own a first-round pick.
