The Bears’ excuse for failing to trade Justin Fields lacks all common sense

All offseason, the Bears have been presumably preparing to move on from Justin Fields and select a new young quarterback with the No. 1 overall pick in next month’s NFL draft. If only this bumbling excuse for a pro football organization could get out of its own way.

With the early salvos of 2024 free agency taking away various potential Fields’ trade suitors off the board — Kirk Cousins with the rising Atlanta Falcons, Russell Wilson with the usually competent Pittsburgh Steelers — the Bears have more or less been left high and dry. It turns out most other NFL teams don’t want to trade a Day 2 draft pick for a flawed quarterback and extend him his fifth-year option. Huh, who knew?

Now armed with little recourse but to reevaluate how the rest of the league views their incumbent quarterback, it sure seems like the Bears are trying to play the stupidest public damage control imaginable for their trade failure:

Why haven't the #Bears traded Justin Fields? Well: This isn't a Justin Fields situation, it's a Caleb Williams situation. Let me explain… pic.twitter.com/zmOAIqA26O

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 12, 2024

Do you mean to tell me that they didn’t deal away Fields because they’re still evaluating Caleb Williams? Really? That’s the best possible explanation that Chicago general manager Ryan Poles and his cronies could come up with. Come on now.

At this time of year, in mid-March, you’re confident in your potential quarterback of the future (that everyone else seems to love) and deal away the guy (Fields) you don’t want when his market is the healthiest. There is nothing much else to learn about Williams (or Drake Maye) at this stage in the evaluative process. And even if you’re unsure who to take, it seems pretty clear Fields isn’t in the long-term plans, and you should be committed to maximizing his trade value as much as possible before taking more appropriate time in deciding on a rookie signal-caller.

You do all that, or you simply stand pat and stick with Fields and deal away with the top pick.

But that’s not really what happened here. Oh, no, no.

The Bears asked for too much in a Fields trade, everyone balked at the price — including two of the primary suitors who opted for two quarterbacks in their mid-30s instead — and now they’re trying to pretend that the reason nothing happened is because they’re only 99 percent sure Williams is their man. Again, that is literally the best they could do to save face for playing themselves. It’s embarrassing, I know.

I’d say I’m surprised this failure happened with Poles — who has 10 wins in two years as a GM — but this is par for the course for the Bears, a franchise that can’t even get its own fanbase properly excited for a generational quarterback prospect because it doesn’t know how to rip the Band-Aid off.

Bravo, Bears. Next, you’ll tell us that, actually, you believed in Fields the whole time, and pigs will start flying in the sky.