I believe the Chicago Bears’ plan at quarterback will crystallize soon, and the winds of change are blowing. There’s some tea-leaf reading we can do here.
Until this weekend, the Bears had planned to bring USC Trojans QB Caleb Williams to Chicago for his top 30 visit Tuesday, fresh off the combine.
That is extraordinarily early—most teams don’t even start with 30 visits until the end of March or beginning of April when pro days are wrapping up.
The idea was pretty simple. Chicago wanted to check some final boxes before finalizing its plan at quarterback before free agency starts next week.
In the end, Williams and the team decided to move things around: Rather than shuttling the quarterback to and from California again, in the midst of preparations for his March 20 pro day, the Bears will host Williams in Chicago shortly after that instead.
But the idea alone tells you plenty about where the team is.
In an ideal world, the Bears would be able to go through a complete process in assessing this year’s quarterback class before deciding what to do with Justin Fields.
Alas, the world Chicago is living in now isn’t such an ideal one. Simply put, it’s not practical for Chicago to wait until mid-April, when the spots available for veteran quarterbacks across the league have filled up, to trade Fields.
It wouldn’t allow for the Bears to maximize Fields’s value. It also wouldn’t be doing right by Fields, which is what Chicago GM Ryan Poles told the media he wants to do.
