This is the time of year when lost and wandering NFL teams begin to covet a piece of what they are not: innovative, stable and with a forward direction. When it comes to hiring a coach or a general manager, this normally materializes in the direct pilfering of organizations that exude these qualities, instead of the search for those who are capable of doing it outside the confines of places such as San Francisco, Philadelphia or Baltimore, for example.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad on the surface about hiring 49ers or Eagles or Ravens, but if I were bringing in a cook to start my restaurant, I wouldn’t just nab the sous-chef from Eleven Madison Park. I would want to see what that person could do with a bag of expiring groceries from Aldi in an abandoned food truck kitchen first.
Everyone is going to look a little better in Philadelphia, for example, where a savvy and experienced general manager and invested owner lord over a veteran roster full of players who can buffer any personnel risks, such as Jalen Carter (not to mention an offensive line full of players who don’t seem to miss many games). The same goes for Baltimore, a place so analytically ahead of the curve that the Ravens’ mid-round picks over the past five years could, themselves, form a competitive NFL franchise.
But, what happens outside of those confines? What happens when the proprietary formula for success has to be applied to a completely new set of variables, like a hardened press core, a clueless owner, an underpaid office staff or a technologically archaic setup? What happens when you say: “O.K., let’s install that Eagles offense” and you look at your roster and don’t possess a 36-year-old center who can pull with the athleticism of an Olympic gymnast? What happens if you want to play the compensatory pick game but need to retain most of your players just to stave off a winless season?
That’s why I’ve been so interested in the Chicago Bears in 2023, and what they have been able to accomplish through hardship, injury and other obstacles (Chicago drubbed the Falcons 37–17 on Sunday, by the way). Ryan Poles and his top lieutenant, Ian Cunningham—an executive, interestingly enough, with critical stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore—have locked up the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft (via the Panthers). They’ve also overseen the development of ’21 first-round pick Justin Fields, who could pay for himself on the open market if the Bears chose to trade him (meaning, the Bears could get another first-round pick for Fields, though they may not be able to reap the entirety of the draft trade Chicago employed to move up for Fields in the first place). Or, the Bears could trade the No. 1 pick again (as they did last year) and keep Fields for a haul that could be historic, and may not even have to fall that far out of the top five to do so.
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The point is Chicago has only good options, having decided to patiently wait out a rookie quarterback class of 2023 that, so far, has had promise but, outside of an incredible run by C.J. Stroud, is still largely unknown. Their approach reminds me of a conversation I had a few years back with Cade Massey and Richard Thaler, the economist and behavioral expert who first penned a lengthy defense of trading back to accumulate draft capital. They had been in contact with folks in front offices around the league who were stunned at the amount of capital they could reap simply by delaying gratification; that is, capitalizing on a team’s desperation to succeed in the moment by attaining better compensation in future drafts down the road. Those folks compared it to theft.
Along the way, the Bears have also displayed what I view as a sound understanding of football economics.
One example: insisting that wide receiver DJ Moore—who led all receivers in Sunday’s game with nine catches for 159 yards and a touchdown—was in the Panthers’ trade for the No. 1 pick (which I liked at the time). Moore is one catch shy of his single-season career high (93), and has already set career highs in receiving yards (1,300) and touchdowns (eight). He also costs $10 million less per season than the highest-paid receiver in the NFL. Moore’s contract was uniquely valuable because it was signed before the great wide receiver gold rush, which, thanks to deals swung by Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill, shoved the wide receiver market into a different financial stratosphere. In 2024, Moore’s cap charge will be closer in complexion to that of Michael Gallup than that of Adams or Hill, despite the fact that Moore is playing like a team’s No. 1 wide receiver.
Another example: trading for Montez Sweat at this year’s deadline (which I also liked at the time). Sweat cost the Bears a second-round pick, and they quickly signed him to a four-year, $98 million deal. Sweat is on pace to set a career high in sacks this year, which could mean he’s rounding into his athletic prime at age 27.
However, what we’re not considering is the marketplace for pass rushers. Sweat is making about $10 million less than Nick Bosa and, while I am not arguing that Sweat is better than Bosa, I am saying that Sweat has more sacks, one fewer tackle for loss and nine fewer quarterback hits. This coming offseason, Micah Parsons will be eligible for what will undoubtedly be a market-altering contract extension for the pass-rusher market. T.J. Watt and Myles Garrett will both be through their existing contracts by the end of 2026, and, with Garrett in particular, I wonder whether he would like to see his deal altered after what could be a Defensive Player of the Year–type season, given that he is not the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL right now. Like the receiver market that the Bears were able to sidestep, the edge market is only going to expand to a point of financial lunacy. This is palatable if you have Bosa or Garrett. This is not if you don’t, because that means every other player will get more expensive by tying themselves to the tail end of the market. Sweat is signed through ’27 and is largely immune to those major vacillations. If he continues to play somewhere near his current state, his contract will hold up as one of the better values in the NFL, like Moore’s, for the coming seasons at a premium position.
Pair that with the standard trappings of what one would consider a good job by a personnel department—the Bears got T.J. Edwards for $6.5 million per season and one could argue he’s among the best linebackers in the NFL, Andrew Billings makes next to nothing and is a more than serviceable down lineman, and a handful of draft picks are playing well—and you could argue that this is developing into one of the more innovative and consistently successful front-office structures in the NFL. They counterbalance the bigger swings and misses, which are going to happen. Personnel departments should not be weighed by their closeness to perfection, but how well the rest of the operation mitigates the failures.
The Bears weathered in-house turmoil, lost a defensive coordinator midseason, had undrafted rookie Tyson Bagent go 2–2 as a starting quarterback, had a starting QB question the effectiveness of the play-calling … and ended up finishing the season strongly enough to buoy the idea of keeping their head coach for another season (NFL Network reported earlier this week that Matt Eberflus is expected to be retained, and while my sense was that the decision could have gone either way just a few weeks ago, there is little doubt that the team has shown steady progress and will be expected to compete for a playoff berth next season, especially if it retains Fields).
In some cases—say, the Cleveland Browns during the start of their obvious tank under Hue Jackson—there is a concern when a significant amount of draft equity and free agent cash falls into certain hands. In Chicago, it seems to be instructive. Again, it’s not perfect. It’s more impressive in some spaces, especially where teams are winning and expecting to compete for a Super Bowl, but when considering the raw material for the meal, when considering the last two years in isolation, the Bears have given us something to take notes on.
