By Ryan Glasspiegel
Published Nov. 13, 2023, 5:48 p.m. ET

ESPN Chicago host David Kaplan and former NFL general manager Mike Lombardi will not be exchanging holiday greetings cards this winter.

Before the NFL trade deadline, the Bears made a stunner of a move, trading away a second-round pick to the Commanders for star pass rusher Montez Sweat, a move that also necessitated giving him a big new contract worth up to $98 million over four years.

The move by Bears general manager Ryan Poles was met with widespread derision, as the team did not have playoff aspirations where Sweat could help them now, and could therefore have signed Sweat in free agency without relinquishing the draft pick.

There is another school of thought that the Bears organization has not hit on a lot of draft picks in recent years so parting with one of them for a known commodity may not be the worst thing in the world.

Moreover, the team is sitting on a mountain of cap space and now has Sweat locked up as a franchise building block for several years without the risk of losing him in an open bidding war after the season, or because another team traded for him and locked him up before reaching free agency.

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