LAKE FOREST, Ill. – The Bears and GM Ryan Poles have a long wait until they make their next pick. Unless, of course, they make a move.
As things stand, the Bears don't have a second-round pick. Their selection belongs to the Commanders thanks to last year's Montez Sweat trade, so they'll have to wait until their spot comes up in the third round. But Poles has been no stranger to draft-day deals in the past, and left the door open for another move.
Poles made three trades over the course of the 2022 NFL draft and four trades last year. Poles is also the type of GM to do what it takes to get his guy. When he needed a pass rusher last year, he made the blockbuster deal to acquire then extend Sweat. When he needed a pass catcher for Justin Fields in 2022, he sent a second-round pick to the Steelers for Chase Claypool.
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Obviously one of those deals has been a huge success so far, while the other flopped. Both were examples of Poles’ bold decision-making.
So it should come as no surprise that Poles said the Bears could “potentially” trade up into the second round on Friday night. After all, Poles admitted he needed some self-restraint when considering a trade back up into the first round on Thursday.
“Every year there is that feeling around the teens or 20s you're like, 'maybe we'll get back in.' But then you start looking at what it would take, and we would just do damage to ourself for this year and for next year.”
The Bears only have four picks this year: the No. 1 and No. 9 picks that they used to select Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze, then the No. 75 overall pick and the No. 122 pick. They’re flush with picks next year, however. In 2025, Poles doesn’t have his seventh-round pick thanks to the trade that sent Claypool to the Dolphins. But he has an extra second from the deal that sent the No. 1 overall pick to the Panthers in 2023 and two extra sixths thanks to that same Claypool deal and the Fields trade. Things get even better if Fields hits certain playing time thresholds in Pittsburgh, because the sixth-rounder from the Steelers will turn into a fourth-rounder.
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The cost is steep to move up in the first round when more premium prospects are coming off the board. But the “damage” might not be so bad for the Bears to move from No. 75 into the 60s. So if a pass rusher they have graded highly starts falling, for instance, the Bears will consider what it will take to move up and grab him.
“We’ll see what the numbers look like and just kind of gauge if that’s something we need to do.”