Chicago Bears: The Rebuild Continues With Roquan Smith Trade

The Chicago Bears continue to look to the future rebuild by trading star linebacker Roquan Smith for draft picks.

While the Chicago Bears offense continues to improve, general manager Ryan Poles keeps looking to improve the roster. After trading Robert Quinn for a draft pick last week, he now traded star linebacker Roquan Smith for two more picks.

The Bears traded Smith to the Baltimore Ravens for a second-round and fifth-round pick in 2023.

Smith was in his contract year. He held a hold-in this offseason when contract talks broke down. Smith accused the Bears and Poles of negotiating in bad faith. He requested a trade then but Poles denied it.

Smith went on to say that the relationship was broken and anything short of Chicago Bears Chairman George McCaskey stepping in, it wouldn’t be fixed.

Apparently, McCaskey did not step in and Poles ended up trading Smith.

There was a report just 24 hours earlier that claimed the Bears would keep Smith as the trade deadline (November 1) passes. However, keeping Smith would mean that the Bears would have to franchise him. That would be prohibitive. On and off-ball linebackers are grouped together so a franchise tag for Smith would be at a pass-rusher-level kind of money. Poles did not want to pay that.

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The rebuild will be in full swing in 2023

In the span of five days, Poles and the Chicago Bears really added a lot of assets to the rebuild. The trade of Quinn netted a 2023 fourth-round pick. Additionally, they saved $26.8 million over the next two seasons. They already led the NFL in salary cap space before the Quinn trade and now they have over $120 million in cap space for 2023.

Now with the Smith trade, Poles acquires two more picks. For the 2023 draft, the Bears now have nine picks. They have a pick in the first, two in the second, one in the third round, two in the fourth and fifth rounds, and one in the seventh. Additionally, they may be eligible for a compensation pick.

In last year’s draft, Poles transformed just five picks into 11. However, most of them were late-round picks. Six of those picks came in the sixth and seventh rounds.

In 2023, eight of the nine picks are in the first five rounds, including a first-round pick.

While things may be ugly for the 2022 season, things will certainly be looking up next offseason.