Fresh off a 40-20 whomping of the Washington Commanders in their own house, the Bears finally make an expected trade, moving on from one of the worst trades in NFL history.
On Friday morning, Chicago traded wide receiver Chase Claypool to the Miami Dolphins for a swap of a 2025 sixth-round pick and a 2025 seventh-round pick.
We’ll get to the Bears, but let’s talk Dolphins first. This team just got insane, if all goes well.
Then Dolphins already have a top five, maybe even three, offense and just got even better. You have the best WR duo in Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, and they just added a guy who could make it the best trio. If Claypool can go back to his non-knucklehead ways in 2020 and 2021 and showcase his elite talent, Miami opponents should be terrified.
Now for Chicago, what a disaster. At the trade deadline in 2022, Pittsburgh traded the former third-round pick to the Bears for a 2023 second-round pick. For those who weren’t aware, the Bears had the worst record in 2022, and held the first pick in the draft (later traded to the Panthers). That means they also held the first pick in the second round. That pick was the 32nd overall pick, which is usually the final pick of the first round, but funny enough it was the Dolphins who had to give up their first-round pick due to violating the NFL’s anti-tampering policy when speaking with Tom Brady and Don Yee, Sean Payton and Brady’s agent, while still under contract with their current teams.
That pick turned into cornerback Joey Porter Jr., who is a nice-looking rookie early in his career.
So the Bears traded away the 32nd pick (Porter) for 10 games (five starts), 18 catches for 191 yards and one touchdown, and then swapped late round picks. Not great, but at least the front office was willing to admit to their mistake.
To the Bears credit, Claypool is such a talented player, which he showed in his first two seasons in the league, but based on all the insider reports, he is a locker room cancer.
Clips went viral early this season of his clear lack of effort on the field.
He was then interviewed last week and said he wasn’t being properly used, which sparked even more controversy with his behavior.
He was made a healthy scratch the last two weeks, which usually indicates the player is not good enough to play in the game, which is not something you want from a once-thought-of budding star player that you traded a high draft pick for. But we can finally move on.
If there’s anywhere that could straighten Claypool out, Miami might either be the worst place, or the best place. We shall see, but I am excited (and scared) to see what he does in Miami, and relieved that we can be rid of his storyline in Chicago.
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