After landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft thanks to a shrewd pre-draft trade just one year ago with the Carolina Panthers, the Chicago Bears entered the offseason in a favorable position, sitting pretty in the Caleb Williams market while also having a young quarterback in Justin Fields available via trade after a strong close to his third season.
But in the offseason, Bears GM Ryan Poles found that the trade market for Fields wasn’t as strong as he was hoping it would be. That eventually led to him accepting a conditional sixth-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft for Fields from the Pittsburgh Steelers, which he said was one of the hardest things he’s had to do in his career.
The return on Fields, the No. 11 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, was much lower than anyone seemingly anticipated, including Poles.
“I was a little bit surprised. But as you do research and we have conversations you have to kind of adjust to the market,” Poles told reporters Monday morning at the NFL Owners Meetings in Orlando of Fields’ trade market, according to a tweet from ESPN’s Courtney Cronin. “…If you look at the beginning, there are probably teams that are looking at the draft for guys to fill in. On the back end, playoff teams probably have someone in place. So really it was a smaller pool of teams.”
Entering the offseason, the expectation was that the pool of teams would include the Steelers, Atlanta Falcons, Las Vegas Raiders and potentially one of the Minnesota Vikings or New England Patriots.
The Falcons targeted Kirk Cousins in free agency right away and landed the big fish, while the Raiders — even with former Chicago OC Luke Getsy on staff — went a different direction, signing Gardner Minshew II in free agency. The Vikings or Patriots never seemingly showed interest, and the Steelers ultimately showed interest and got a deal done after trading Kenny Pickett to the Philadelphia Eagles following the signing of Russell Wilson.
Despite being a starting quarterback in the NFL with 40 career games and 38 starts under his belt, Fields didn’t have much of a market. Some of that could be tied to his contractual status with the fifth-year option of just over $25.6 million hanging over him and needing to be picked up or declined by May 2.
The Steelers are unlikely to pick up that fifth-year option, which would make Fields an unrestricted free agent after the 2024 season unless the Steelers can work out an extension with the Ohio State product.
But that fifth-year option and the lack of team control had an effect on Fields’ market, period. That worked out in Pittsburgh’s favor, too.
Poles expanded on his thoughts about the Fields trade in an article posted on ESPN by Cronin.
“They have a starter with Russ, but there was more of an open competition, it felt like from my perspective,” Poles said. “There were other opportunities where there were some quarterbacks that were either veteran guys or young guys that had already been paid, so it would have been a tougher situation for him to get on the field.”
Fields and his agent reportedly requested to not be traded to certain teams who had offered because he wanted to go to Pittsburgh. One can only think that they agreed his best chance of seeing the field was with the Steelers.
Now, let’s see if the Steelers can take advantage of that limited trade market for Fields and get the best out of him from a developmental standpoint.
