veganfan21 wrote:
Jaw Breaker wrote:
Latest story in the Athletic is making Poles out to be weak minded, that he made the trade because of anxiety, he couldn’t handle the pressure of the first pick, etc.
Can you paste? The premise seems dumb. Everyone knew the QB class was mixed at best and that no one was clearly better than Fields. That made trading the pick to pick up extra assets very very very obvious.
How the Bears and Panthers swung the blockbuster trade for the NFL Draft’s No. 1 pick
theathletic.com
By Joseph Person, Adam Jahns and Kevin Fishbain
Ryan Poles was driving everyone nuts.
The Bears general manager couldn’t sit still in his office at Halas Hall.
It was Friday, March 10, and some of the team’s top decision-makers — assistant GM Ian Cunningham, senior vice president/general counsel Cliff Stein and director of football administration Matt Feinstein — had gathered with Poles at the team’s home base in Lake Forest, Ill.
“I was pacing back and forth, just all over the place,” Poles said. “I just wanted to get it done.”
“It” would be the trade that shook up the NFL Draft, the trade that would alter the futures of the two organizations involved — and maybe those that weren’t.
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In Charlotte, GM Scott Fitterer was in his office with head coach Frank Reich, assistant GM Dan Morgan, VP of football administration Samir Suleiman and president Kristi Coleman, waiting to see if the Panthers secured the No. 1 pick for the first time since 2011 — the year they drafted an Auburn quarterback named Cam Newton.
When the trade was finalized — just before happy hour in the East — Carolina had put itself in position to find a franchise quarterback. But the celebration was brief: The Panthers had to call their best offensive player and tell him he was being dealt to Chicago.
In conversations with The Athletic at the NFL owners’ meetings, Poles and Fitterer explained how the blockbuster deal came to fruition.
In early October, it appeared the Panthers might get the No. 1 pick without needing to trade for it. They were 1-4 when they fired coach Matt Rhule after a 22-point home loss to San Francisco and fell to 1-5 the following week at Los Angeles in Steve Wilks’ first game as interim coach.
When the Panthers traded running back Christian McCaffrey to the 49ers on Oct. 21, there was talk about whether they were tanking for the top pick.
But players rallied around Wilks, who leaned on his defense and a physical rushing attack led by D’Onta Foreman. That approach kept the Panthers competitive, and they traveled to Tampa Bay in Week 17 with first place in the NFC South on the line.
As Carolina started winning, Fitterer understood he would need to get creative to position the Panthers for one of the top quarterback prospects in the 2023 draft.
“Once you know you’re not gonna be in the top five, it’s, ‘OK, how we gonna get there?'” he said. “But let’s worry about that later. Let’s win now.”
After losing to the Bucs, the Panthers beat the Saints in their regular-season finale to cap a 7-10 season and secure the No. 9 pick.
“That’s when it gets more expensive,” Fitterer said. “What makes sense? Do you bridge it another year with another vet and keep building? But at some point, we had to fix it.”
For Poles, fixing the Bears’ roster was always going to be a multi-year rebuild. As time ran out on the season with Chicago’s 10th consecutive loss, fans lingered in the Soldier Field concourses, glued to televisions that showed the game going on in Indianapolis.
Suddenly, cheers echoed throughout the stadium. The Texans had miraculously beaten the Colts, giving the 3-14 Bears the No. 1 pick for the first time since 1947.
When Poles got home that night, a neighbor drove by to congratulate him, but he wasn’t in the mood to celebrate the worst record in the league.
“It hurts to be in that position,” he said days after the season ended. “Obviously, the opportunities and the things that will come from that, I hope that it helps us. But you’re always expecting to win. You don’t want to be in this position.”
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In the next days and weeks, Poles went to work figuring out exactly what opportunities could come from having the top pick. As he put his analytics team to work, he also decided that an ideal trade would involve draft picks and a player.
Poles needed help — or maybe just some advice from a friend in town. So he called Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson.
“Really, hockey is the only one where you’re trading a combination of picks and players,” Poles said. “So I just was curious.”
He had plenty of questions about how the Blackhawks valued players against picks, how contracts and age played into the equation, etc. Davidson started laughing.
“He’s like, ‘It’s a challenge,'” Poles recalled.
Like the Blackhawks, Poles asked the Bears’ analytics team to work on “wins over expected,” an advanced measurement, to measure the potential impact of a trade acquisition.
“I had our guys working through different players,” Poles said. “Just to kind of see where we’re at.”
The Bears examined the compensation from past trades, then discussed their situation and circumstances.
Chicago was open to sticking with quarterback Justin Fields and improving the roster around him before a critical evaluation year. The Bears didn’t have the second, third or fourth pick. They had the first. And, whether through media reports or just knowing the holes on other rosters, Poles, Cunningham and the rest of the Bears’ front office knew what teams needed.
“It set up where it puts certain teams in need of a quarterback in certain spots,” Poles said.
Poles took the information with him to the scouting combine in Indianapolis. The Panthers were the first team to reach out.
“They were the first ones to kind of kick it off,” he said, “which tells you a lot.”
Poles worked out of the Hyatt in downtown Indianapolis, away from the bustle of the JW Marriott complex and where other Bears staff members stayed. He said he “slow-played” things at first, then heard from Fitterer, whom he knew well from their days on the road as scouts.
The two GMs met in Poles’ suite as the combine got underway on Monday, Feb. 27. Fitterer said the initial meeting lasted about 20 minutes. He realized fairly quickly he wouldn’t be able to make the jump from 9 to 1 with picks alone.
Poles would later ask about several Panthers players, three of whom best fit some of the Bears’ needs. Neither GM would confirm it, but according to league sources with knowledge of the talks who were granted anonymity to discuss the deal without repercussions, Poles was interested in pass rusher Brian Burns, defensive tackle Derrick Brown and receiver D.J. Moore, all former first-round picks.
“Usually young teams like that, they want all picks,” Fitterer said. “In (Poles’) situation, I think it helped that they had some cap space they needed to fill. And then they have a young quarterback that they need to figure out is he the guy going forward.”
The Panthers’ first offer did not include a player, but Fitterer and Poles kept talking in Indianapolis, including twice at Lucas Oil Stadium. With little headway on an agreement, Fitterer pulled the offer on Sunday, March 5, before flying back to Charlotte the following day.
A night after Fitterer’s first meeting with Poles, the team’s brass — including owners David and Nicole Tepper, Reich and quarterbacks coach Josh McCown — sat down with free-agent Derek Carr at the Marriott in downtown Indianapolis. Reich came away from the meeting impressed with the 32-year-old former Raiders quarterback.
“Derek is an excellent leader. He’s an excellent passer,” Reich told reporters the next day. “He checks a lot of boxes that you’re looking for.”
But after renting a quarterback in each of Rhule’s three seasons, the Panthers were ready to go the draft-and-develop route, which Reich and Fitterer both had called the preferred approach.
The Panthers had top-10 picks in three consecutive drafts in which they didn’t take a quarterback. They watched the Chargers draft Justin Herbert one spot ahead of them at No. 6 in 2020 and didn’t view Fields and Mac Jones or Kenny Pickett as worthy of a top-10 selection in 2021 or 2022, respectively.
But Fitterer was more convicted about this year’s quarterback class and agreed to circle back with Poles in the days after the combine. Back in Charlotte, Fitterer continued to run through scenarios with Reich, Morgan and Suleiman, who handles player negotiations and salary-cap management.
The Bears met with Alabama’s Bryce Young, Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud and Florida’s Anthony Richardson as part of their due diligence in Indianapolis. And the better Poles felt about the quarterbacks in this year’s class, the better he felt about his position.
“Their interviews were very good,” Poles said. “Mentally, they’re in a really good place to talk ball and talk through the things that they knew about the game, and you could tell like football intelligence was not going to be the issue.
“I knew coming out if those guys interviewed really well, teams at that moment are going to be more motivated to get something done sooner rather than later.”
On the field at Lucas Oil Stadium, Stroud had an outstanding throwing session, while Richardson shattered the athletic profile for QBs. And they both did so amid the widespread belief that Young was still the best of the bunch. The Bears were impressed by the quarterbacks — and they were certain other teams would feel the same — but they weren’t blown away enough to stay at No. 1. The team would move ahead with a plan to build around Fields.
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“We need multiple players,” Poles said. “Obviously, draft picks are opportunity. (We’re) well aware that we still got to do a good job of getting the right players, and so it gives you a chance.”
But the outside possibility that no trade would materialize did keep Poles up at night.
“That’s the anxiety in the parts of this job that no one sees,” he said. “It’s sitting up in bed at 2, 3 o’clock in the morning working through the scenarios and being like, ‘I have this great situation and I can’t get out.’
“It’s like a dream where you can’t run away.”
Whenever Bears head coach Matt Eberflus visited Poles’ office, he could see who was in play for the No. 1 pick and a detailed update on where negotiations stood.
“(They) had everything up on the board so you could see every suitor that was there and look and weigh the options,” he said.
There was more for Fitterer to sort through, too. He had discussions with Arizona and Seattle about the No. 3 and No. 5 picks, respectively. Fitterer spent two decades in the Seahawks’ front office and remains close with GM John Schneider, but the talks for the fifth pick never intensified.
The Panthers weren’t alone in wanting to jump to No. 1, and they sensed there would be competition. Indeed, Poles said a “wave” of teams checked in after Carolina. The Bears had calls with QB-needy teams throughout the draft — not only in the top 10, where three were willing to discuss potential compensation.
The Raiders had conversations about what it would take to get to the top pick from No. 7. The Colts (including Poles’ former colleague in Kansas City, Chris Ballard) were also involved but only to a certain point; the timing just wasn’t right for Indianapolis and some other clubs.
What intrigued Poles most, though, was the possibility of moving down one spot to Houston’s pick at No. 2 and then down to No. 9. For the Bears, it would be two big moves wrapped into a bigger one. The Panthers, who were comfortable with two of the top four quarterbacks, were open to it. But Poles’ dream scenario hinged on the Texans moving up.
“Houston had to be good with it first,” he said.
With free agency getting closer, Poles started to get anxious. The Texans weren’t committing.
Fitterer had heard about the Bears’ talks with other teams and called Poles on his way to his daughter’s high school soccer game on Tuesday, March 7.
“He’s like, ‘Yeah if you want to jump in on this, make an offer,'” Fitterer said.
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Poles met Tepper when he interviewed for the Carolina GM job in 2021. Based on that experience, he knew Tepper to be an aggressive businessman. The Panthers had swung big for a quarterback a couple of times after Tepper bought the team in 2018, making trade offers for Matthew Stafford and Deshaun Watson.
“If they saw value in this, then they would be very motivated to get it done,” Poles said.
After his conversation with Poles, Fitterer called Tepper, and the owner agreed it was time to make a bold move to escape the quarterback purgatory that had existed in Carolina since Newton’s body began to break down in 2018. Fitterer then called Poles back, and the two talked through the entirety of Fitterer’s daughter’s soccer game. The Panthers made a second offer, this time including Moore.
Fitterer was reluctant to part with Moore, Carolina’s first-round pick in 2018 whom the Panthers extended last offseason at three years and $61.9 million before the wide receiver market blew up. Moore never went to a Pro Bowl in Carolina. But he was one of only three receivers in Panthers history with three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons — a tough, durable player who missed two games in five seasons.
“We couldn’t get there with just picks,” Fitterer said. “So we argued that D.J. was worth a 1, plus somebody else. We both agreed how valuable he would be for a young quarterback, to give him a proper evaluation.”
Poles had said publicly he thought he could get three first-round selections for the pick. But by including Moore in the deal, the Panthers were able to hold on to one of their future firsts.
“There were certain players that we never really wanted to trade,” Fitterer said. “It’s so hard to replace a Derrick Brown or Brian Burns, a pass rusher (and) an interior, dominant young player on a (first) contract. D.J., we didn’t want to move either. But it’s a little bit easier to replace a receiver than it is a pass rusher or a three-tech.”
The framework of the deal was mostly in place, but there was a hangup: The Bears wanted the Panthers’ second-round pick (No. 39), which Fitterer was determined to keep. Instead, the Panthers countered with their other second-round pick (No. 61), which they’d acquired in the McCaffrey trade.
“We didn’t want to have that big gap in there,” Fitterer said. “We thought the sweet spot in this class is somewhere between 20 and 45, just really good value in there. At 61, that’s a heck of a fall, and you’re gonna watch a lot of good players (get taken).”
Fitterer proposed a sweetener to close it out — the Panthers’ second-round pick in 2025 — to go along with 9 and 61 this year, next year’s first and Moore. Tepper, the hedge fund manager worth $18.5 billion, signed off on the additional second.
“He thought that was a pretty inexpensive move to get up there to get your future quarterback to change the direction of your franchise,” Fitterer said. “Dave’s very good at managing value, showing some restraint yet being aggressive. This is the world he lives in.”
The Bears were comfortable with the move down to No. 9, too. Alabama pass rusher Will Anderson might not be an option, but other “blue” graded players on their board should be, especially if three quarterbacks get drafted before them.
“Play the percentage game, it’s probably a chance one (quarterback) slides in, but … there’s different tiers in the first round,” Poles said. “There’s always that cut-off of ‘elite’ and then it’s ‘very good starters.’ I know we’ll be in range for the players that are going to be in that first round that kind of hit that value bucket and for our team are going to make us better.”
After talking through different scenarios with Poles and other front-office members on Friday, March 10, Eberflus left for the Deer Path Inn in Lake Forest. It was time for dinner. And that’s when the deal got done.
“We went with the best option that we thought was good for the franchise,” Eberflus said. “It was the right thing to do.”
In Halas Hall, Poles stopped pacing. As coaches exited the building for the weekend, he let them know. They were “stoked.” He texted chairman George McCaskey and new team president Kevin Warren.
Poles remembered his first major move as Bears GM, when his agreed-upon signing of defensive lineman Larry Ogunjobi fell through because of a failed physical. He was excited but would remain anxious until Wednesday afternoon when Moore was in the building and officially a Bear.
“I liked the compensation a lot,” he said. “I started getting excited about what we can do for the organization — not only having D.J. enhance and help Justin develop but also down the road. And at this time next year, we’re having two 1s. I don’t know where they’ll be, but I know they will help us get better.”
With Tepper participating remotely via conference call, the Panthers were fired up after finishing the deal. But first, they had to get in touch with Moore and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus.
“It was an exciting moment for everyone. There were a lot of high-fives,” Suleiman said. “But it was — I hate to say short-lived, but we had to immediately call D.J. and let him know so he wasn’t learning (by) reading about it. We wanted him to hear it from us first.”
Afterward, Fitterer and Morgan would go to dinner with their wives. But all of the Panthers’ decision-makers unwound in Fitterer’s office first, talking about the trade for a half-hour or so.
“Wow,” Fitterer said to the group, “Did we just trade up for the first pick?”
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Emilee Chinn, Michael Hickey, Michael Reaves, Mike Comer / Getty Images)
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