Mike Tannebaum: Bears Should Trade Justin Fields, Pick Bryce Young

The Chicago Bears earned the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft thanks to a loss and one final Lovie Smith middle finger to the Houston Texans in Week 18. The Bears have many, many holes throughout the roster so the general consensus is that they'll use the No. 1 pick to take one of the top defenders in the draft or trade down to accumulate more picks.

There is a third option that will only garner more attention as we get closer to the draft: trading Justin Fields to take Bryce Young.

This will be a talking point for months. Mike Tannebaum became the first (as far as we're aware) media pundit to openly call for the move on television and did so twice on ESPN this morning.

Big thanks to Mike for kicking us off. This will only be the first of many posts on the matter so I will get my thoughts down now.

Trading Fields to take Young would be very, very stupid. Fields has his problems in the passing game for sure. But the 2022 season showed that he is special in a way very few quarterbacks have ever been special. He already owns an NFL record for rushing yards by a quarterback. Fields is only the third QB in history to record 1,000 yards on the ground. He did so despite the Bears spending the first six weeks of the season demonstrating a basic misunderstanding of how to use his talents. Imagine the things he'll do once Chicago has a competent offensive system in place that matches his talents for a full season!

Tannebaum even undercuts his own argument by admitting Fields can be a top-10 quarterback. You do not trade that guy for a prospect you hope becomes a top-5 quarterback. This is not Josh Rosen and Kyler Murray. Fields is a good player who put up good numbers and lost games because he has arguably the worst offensive personnel around him in the league.

It feels even sillier to have this discussion when Young is not a surefire superstar. He was obviously very good at Alabama and has a great chance to be a quality starter. But he isn't Trevor Lawrence or Andrew Luck. Young has limitations that were on display during his college days. It doesn't sink his NFL future. He could end up being better than Fields, as Tannebaum says. But it is far from a sure thing. The Bears would have to bet on the guy they haven't seen over the guy whose been in the building for the last two years. They will not do that and they should not do that.

I look forward to having this discussion again in a month or so. Until then!