Blockbuster trades are dangerous beasts. They can send a team to new heights in the short-term but just as easily crush them down the road. This is what happened to the Chicago Bears 10 years ago when they gave away a giant package for quarterback Jay Cutler. Things were great the first two years which included a trip to the NFC championship. Then they fell apart. So is Ryan Pace walking the same road to destruction as his predecessor Jerry Angelo?
No, and here’s why. One of the vital keys that get so overlooked in regards to big trades is how teams handle their aftermath. Are they responsible with the money and picks they have left? This article will help to explain how Angelo failed in this regard and how Pace is avoiding those same mistakes he made.
It boils down to limiting the damage and maximizing the safety net. Further explanation will come below, but let’s start by examining each trade.
Khalil Mack trade:
- 1st round pick (2019)
- 1st round pick (2020)
- 3rd round pick (2020)
- 6th round pick (2019)
Received:
- OLB Khalil Mack
- 2nd round pick (2020)
- 5th round pick conditional (2020)
Jay Cutler trade:
- 1st round pick (2009)
- 1st round pick (2010)
- 3rd round pick (2009)
- QB Kyle Orton
Received:
- QB Jay Cutler
- 5th round pick (2009)
Now remember this isn’t about determining whether the GMs got the right player for the price paid. It’s about examining how they handled their resources in the aftermath. Let’s start with Angelo. Most people don’t know this, but the Bears actually had 2nd round picks in both the 2009 and 2010 drafts following the Cutler trade. They weren’t in terrible position regarding their assets.
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So how did they come to not using either of them? In 2009, the Bears received an offer from the Seattle Seahawks to trade down. They would receive a 3rd round pick and a 4th round pick in exchange for their 2nd rounder. Angelo accepted. The Seahawks moved up and grabbed future Pro Bowl center Max Unger. The Bears secured Jarron Gilbert with that 3rd round choice and Henry Melton with the 4th rounder.
Unger just retired. Melton, the best part of that deal, hasn’t played in years. Keep in mind their move back also cost them chances at names like LeSean McCoy, Paul Kruger, and Sebastian Vollmer.
It gets better though.
Before that year was even over, Angelo struck again. He traded his 2nd rounder in 2010 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for defensive end Gaines Adams. A former top five pick who’d struggled over the previous two years. He finished out that year for them and then tragically passed away due to a heart condition that offseason. Just like that, the Bears were down their two 1st and two 2nd round picks in 2009 and 2010.
What they had to show for them was Cutler, Gilbert, Melton, and Adams. If that weren’t bad enough? The pick the Bears gave up for Adams eventually went to the New England Patriots who used it to take Rob Gronkowski. One could easily argue Angelo’s mishandling of those precious resources in the aftermath of the Cutler trade set the stage for his eventual firing in January of 2012.
It’s also a lesson that Pace seems to have learned from.
So what about the man who now holds Angelo’s job? People will accuse Pace of being just as reckless regarding his 2nd round pick in 2019. Except they would be wrong. Don’t forge that his trading of that pick happened months earlier during the 2018 draft. A move that secured them Anthony Miller, who had seven touchdowns as a rookie.
He’s already light years ahead of Jarron Gilbert and could soon surpass Melton as well with a little more time. It doesn’t end there though. Where Angelo kept depleting his stock of high picks following the Cutler deal, Pace has been doing the opposite. He secured an extra 2nd rounder for 2020 in the Mack trade itself. Since then he has them in line for three more picks.
Two are 4th and 5th round compensatory selections from the losses of Adrian Amos and Bryce Callahan while the other comes via the trading of Jordan Howard. The Bears are projected to have 10 picks in 2020 including two in the 2nd round. All this while maintaining a healthy salary cap despite making Mack the highest-paid defensive player in history.
Thus instead of traversing two years without using a pick in the top two rounds, Pace has reduced it to one. He even got the one he lost in the Miller trade back. That is how one handles a blockbuster trade. Rather than continue to recklessly spend valuable resources in the aftermath, he operates with the intent of protecting and even expanding them. This ensures the team can better protect their future.
