Of all the rumors that have swirled around the Chicago Bears in the past few weeks, the one involving a possible trade for Andy Dalton has the full attention of fans. The setup is fairly straightforward. The Bears are seeking competition at quarterback for Mitch Trubisky. Word is they prefer somebody with significant starting experience. Dalton, who has been a starter since 2011, would seem to make sense. He took the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs five times during his career.
However, many people aren’t wild about the idea of trading for him. Giving up a draft pick and what would be $17.7 million in cap space makes no logical sense for the Bears. They already need every pick possible since they have no 1st or 3rd rounders and they have just $24-26 million in space available to spend. Throwing that much at a 32-year old QB with no playoff victories in his career reeks of recklessness.
Luckily, it seems the media is exaggerating matters like usual.
Bengals beat writer Jay Morrison has no such optimism that Cincinnati will get any sort of notable return for Dalton. They had that opportunity last October and threw it away. Teams know they’re drafting Joe Burrow and won’t be keeping Dalton. So why make a trade at all?
“The Bengals sat on their hands at the trade deadline last year despite being 0-8, saying it wasn’t their job to make other teams better and insisting they intended to keep their good players to win games and build momentum for the new coaching staff. The thinking was that they could try to win some games and then trade some of their players this offseason.
But they’ve lost a lot of leverage in doing so. Everyone knows they’ll be cutting Dalton and offensive tackle Cordy Glenn if they can’t find trade partners, so many teams are willing to wait them out or give low-ball offers.”
Andy Dalton would be much cheaper as a free agent
The entire idea from the Bengals’ perspective is believing teams that might want Dalton don’t want to risk him reaching the open market. A trade basically guarantees they’d get him. Except this year’s crop of veteran quarterbacks are decidedly richer than normal. Demand for Dalton is likely not to be anywhere close to where it would be in most offseasons. Teams might be more inclined to take their chances on the market than give up significant resources in a trade.
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Chicago has good reasons to feel they’d be a desirable landing spot for Dalton. Virtually no other team is going to hand him a starting job. So he’ll have to compete somewhere. Trubisky’s seat is heating up by the day and the Bears have a coaching staff that is heavily geared towards the quarterback. It even includes Dalton’s former offensive coordinator Bill Lazor.
The Bears won’t trade for him. Not because they don’t think he can help. More because there’s no reason to.
