Colin Cowherd often has a unique and informed perspective on the NFL and sometimes the Bears.
During a hilarious rant on his talk show Wednesday about how the Bears should trade Roquan Smith, Cowherd stepped out of the bright light of the knowledgeable and into the darkness of the uninformed and out-of-town idiots.
Cowherd bases his argument for a trade on the idea that the Bears are still stuck in the 1980s and so they’re holding on to Smith because they think football is about defense and linebackers, not offense. They must open to the future, he says.
Trust me, there is no one in Halas Hall who actually decides anything about the football team basing decisions on how things were done in the 1980s.
Maybe some of their meatball fans were mired in the 1980s, but the Bears haven’t been wading through that mud since at least the beginning of the Mark Trestman era.
Bears are in a different ballpark. They just couldn’t find the right coach, the right GM, or the right quarterback.
Trestman knew about the offense, but his defense was one of the worst in the league. They took a step back under John Fox because he forgot to tell people he was retired when he signed his contract. Matt Nagy wasn’t about the defense and the linebackers – he said it was about the offense, but it was all about himself.
The Bears drafted a quarterback in the first round last year that they like, so apparently they did and see the need to have better pass rushers. They don’t have a better receiver than Darnell Mooney because the ones available wanted and took more money elsewhere than the Bears had available under the salary cap to give. The Bears had to fill multiple positions in two completely different schemes to address all those needs in free agency or the draft.
They have money for next year and draft picks. So Cowherd should just hold his horses. It’s coming.
His outburst sounds like he didn’t even realize they had a different GM and different coach.
His comments sound like someone who shouldn’t have been following free agency, the salary cap and the draft.
Tip: Learn at profootballreference.com.
The Bears have Smith and need him because he’s an ideal weakside linebacker for a defensive system that needs one. If they trade Smith, they will have Matthew Adams as their weakside linebacker.
They could get Jerry Rice to become Benjamin Button and suddenly be 22 again, sign a contract with Chicago and they’d lose games this year 35-30 because they don’t have a better weakside linebacker than Adams in a scheme . that requires a good position player.
It’s all about the passes, quarterbacks and receivers, Cowherd says?
Last year saw a drop of 1.8 points per game per team from 24.8 to 23 points. It was the second largest drop in points since the merger, the largest being from 1976 to 77 by 2.0 points.
Apparently offenses aren’t the only thing on NFL teams’ minds, or did the receivers and quarterbacks take over all year?
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It is still the great team game and you need players in all positions in attack and defence. The Bears need a weakside linebacker as talented as Smith for a piece of the foundation.
So the whole premise that they have to waste their money on a linebacker to get a receiver is absurd on a fundamental level.
Also, how does he feel they are getting a great high-end receiver in exchange for Smith if they trade him? If the pass is where it’s at, like he said, why would a team trade a receiver of that caliber for a linebacker?
Beyond all that, trades of this type are not happening at the end of August. Player-to-player trades happen in March and April or even June, if any. Trades now include sketches.
The Bears already have drafts. They will already have enough money to find receiver talent in free agency if they want to next year as well.
At this point, they won’t be getting draft picks equal to Smith’s skills if they make a deal.
Brad Spielberger of Pro Football Focus is usually very accurate with his trade value estimates, and he has Smith pegged at a 2023 second-round pick and a 2024 fifth-round pick.
The Bears have a second one in 2023 already. They also have a fifth runner in 2024. They don’t need that. They need a defender of Smith’s talents.
An amusing aspect of the Cowherd rant was how Dallas is reportedly interested in trading for him. This was not a report. It was a rumor started by someone who just suggested that Dallas was a team that could benefit from a deal. So it is with all the other teams that have been mentioned as interested. Rumors made up to get clicks and not facts at all.
If some team wasn’t giving top receiver talent to entertain, the Bears shouldn’t even be listening to trade discussions. They will have money next season to find a viable X receiver to complement Mooney and help Fields.
They could probably have better receivers off waivers after the final roster cuts this year than some of those they have on their roster right now if that’s such a pressing issue for this season. After this season, as stated, there is draft and free agency and tons of cash available for receivers.
So why would they want to trade their best defensive player for another draft pick?
Paying Smith won’t hurt them going forward because of all the cap space they have and it will help keep their defense intact. They just need to get the deal done right now and it would really help if Smith had a real agent and not some guy he pulled out of an alley who said, “pssst, hey dude, let me help you out.”
All Cowherd did with his rants was find an easy target on a team that is in the middle of a rebuild and blast them with a bunch of age-old irrelevant arguments.
Now succumbing to Smith’s stupid trade request or the shadowy Saint Omni’s trade whims does the Bears no good.
It might benefit someone who has time to fill and likes to do so with lame, irrelevant arguments, but not the Bears.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven