Insider proposes crazy draft scenario where Bears trade Justin Fields

While it’s still not known which direction the Chicago Bears will go with the No. 9 overall pick in the 2023 draft, NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah believes Chicago could be primed to shake up the first round.

During a recent episode of the “Move the Sticks” podcast, Jeremiah proposed (based off of what he called "nothing but pure chaos") that the Bears could pull off a coup by taking Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson with the ninth overall pick (provided he’s still on the board) and then trade third-year quarterback Justin Fields for more draft capital.

“[You] reset the quarterback clock by two years, so you buy two years to be able to live off of a rookie deal,” Jeremiah said. “The roster is going be in much better shape for a quarterback incoming than it was for Justin Fields when he started his career, so if you’re trying to maximize that five-year window on that rookie contract, you’ve reset it, you’ve got a larger window, you’ve got a better team than you did two years ago, you’re going to have to pay Justin here coming up before the team is really, really good and ready to win, you extend that period out.”

Jeremiah admitted his proposal has a "one percent chance" of happening, but the rationale behind it does make sense even if the exact scenario he pitched is a bit farfetched. Chicago all but declared it was invested in Fields for the long haul when it traded the No. 1 overall pick to the Carolina Panthers. 

Had the Bears seriously considered taking a QB, they likely would have preferred a more pro-ready player like Alabama’s Bryce Young or Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, both of whom will be long gone by the ninth pick.

Chicago improved its roster too much during free agency — D.J. Moore, Nate Davis, D’Onta Foreman, Tremaine Edmunds, T.J. Edwards — to want to tough out the next two years with a developmental QB like Richardson, who projects as a less accurate version of Fields.