New England Patriots QB Mac Jones isn’t long for the team that selected him in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft. Sunday morning reports indicate that the Alabama product will be traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars at the start of the new league year next week and possibly for as low as a sixth-round selection. If that’s indeed the compensation for Jones, it really makes one wonder what the Chicago Bears can get for QB Justin Fields at this point.
Sunday morning, Dan Graziano of ESPN wrote that it no longer seems likely the Bears will be able to get a second-round pick for Fields. With it seeming like Jones will indeed be traded to the Jaguars for a sixth-round pick, I would say Graziano’s assumption is right on the money.
The only thing really working in the Bears’ favor right now when it comes to Fields is that he still has a fifth-year option decision tied to him. Even so, any team that trades for him would need to be extremely sure it could turn Fields’ career around to warrant guaranteeing the young quarterback $25.664 million in 2025. I mean, really sure.
A few years ago, the Carolina Panthers acquired QB Sam Darnold from the New York Jets, and they promptly turned around and picked up his fifth-year option. That turned out to be an awful decision. The Panthers, however, were essentially forced into that decision because they gave the Jets a 2021 sixth rounder and a second and a fourth rounder in 2022. That Darnold deal was probably a good lesson to other teams moving forward.
Like Jones, Fields was selected in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft. While Fields has been the better quarterback of the two when it comes to his playmaking ability with his legs, Jones has been the better passer of the two quarterbacks by a little bit. Jones’ career regular season ANY/A stat to date is 5.47 while Fields has posted a 4.77 number since entering the NFL. To put that stat into perspective, Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett has a career ANY/A stat of 5.40 since he was drafted in 2022.
The Steelers have been linked to Fields by insiders, outsiders and othersiders since December. It’s also known that Bears GM Ryan Poles would like to trade Fields sooner rather than later. Will Fields be dealt before the 2024 NFL Draft gets underway? It’s still certainly possible. That said, the Bears probably don’t need to be in a hurry at this point.
But what if the Steelers could acquire Fields from the Bears in exchange for a sixth-round draft pick? That probably wouldn’t be the worst trade in the world, especially because such compensation wouldn’t force the Steelers into turning around and picking up Fields’ fully guaranteed fifth-year option for 2025.
Adding Fields as competition for Pickett via a sixth-round pick and not picking up his fifth-year option would allow the Steelers to stage a true quarterback competition during the summer. Such a scenario would also assume that the team wouldn’t additionally sign veteran QB Russell Wilson, who visited Pittsburgh on Friday.
I should note, however, that Fields is set to earn a fully guaranteed amount of $3,233,448 in 2024 while Pickett is on the books to earn $1,983,900. While that’s not a huge difference, Fields would technically be the more expensive quarterback of the two.
Recently, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stated that the Steelers aren’t going to trade for Fields so there’s that to keep in mind. Additionally, there now seems to be strong buzz about Wilson possibly landing in Pittsburgh soon. Wilson should be officially released by the Denver Broncos by next Saturday night at the latest.
All of the above aside, the Steelers will be adding another quarterback to their roster very soon. If that next quarterback isn’t Wilson or soon-to-be unrestricted free agent Mason Rudolph, perhaps it could be Fields via a trade with the Bears for just a sixth-round pick in return. At this point, I can’t imagine his trade value being much more than that. We’ll see.
