NEWSLETTER
If losing to the 49ers at home was truly a watershed moment for the Bears, and GM Ryan Pace is willing to follow through and be aggressive in this market, then it’s time to really open up to any and all trade possibilities.
Brace yourselves. The NFL Trade Deadline is coming at 3 p.m. CT on Tuesday.
One such possible trade target for a team in contention looking to add before the deadline could be Allen Robinson II. The talented wide receiver is having a rough go of it in 2020. But a résumé featuring 1,000-yard receiving seasons while catching passes from Blake Bortles, Mitchell Trubisky, and Nick Foles shouldn’t be overlooked. Moreover, take into consideration the Bears’ inability to sign Robinson to an extension (despite his public desire to remain in Chicago) makes the team’s leading receiver in 2019 and 2020 a sensible trade option. Not to mention someone who seems to be the most likely to go.
And perhaps that reality is around the corner:
I mentioned this on Cap & Trade with @TexansCap last week, but because I had the contract restructure rule wrong I wasn't sure how feasible an Allen Robinson move actually was…
A source told me to keep an eye on him before tomorrow's deadline. Not reporting anything imminent https://t.co/ypH6GxpTQd
— Brad Spielberger, Esq. (@PFF_Brad) November 1, 2021
PFF’s Brad Spielberger isn’t reporting a Robinson trade is imminent. However, this should put a trade on your radar (and the nugget that teams can convert Franchise Tag dollars into a signing bonus to make a trade happen is particularly interesting). That little caveat could have major implications for the Bears, as well as a number of potential suitors.
Robinson has approximately $9 million left on his 2021 contract, which came about after he signed the Franchise Tag this past offseason. Because of the sizable number on the tag, few teams could deal for Robinson based on the cap number alone. But with a little bit of cap magic, those concerns could be brushed aside. In other words, the Bears have an intriguing player on an expiring deal they can dangle on the market and the means to make a trade happen by eating some cash by way of cap gymnastics.
So … what could a deal possibly look like? It’s tough to put a finger on this one because this is new territory for us. Perhaps this could look like one of those MLB trades where a team sends an expensive player and retains some salary in order to secure a better return? You could hope.
A good recent (and local!) example of this practice would be the Cubs’ trade of Javier Báez to the Mets. In exchange for chewing up the remainder of Báez’s remaining salary, the Cubs were able to get outfield prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong in return. Crow-Armstrong was a first-round pick in 2020 and a top three or four prospect in the Mets’ system. No, I didn’t love the trade at the time. But I understood that this was a good front office process and a solid baseball decision. All that despite me being still miffed about the team trading my favorite player. I’ll get over it one day. Maybe.
Anyway, all of this brings me to trying to figure out a Bears/NFL version of this. Could the Bears eat enough money in terms of a bonus conversion to net the Bears a second-round pick? Would a third rounder be a more even match? Again, this is uncharted territory for all of us. But Bears GM Ryan Pace is no stranger to activating cap shenanigans in order to get a deal done. So I won’t put it past him to do it in this situation. At minimum, that a buzz building around a possible Robinson trade is quite intriguing.
Michael: On the one hand, the evaporating Robinson targets and frustrating progression of this season (plus everything else Luis laid out above), makes me feel like a Robinson trade makes sense. But on the other hand, Ryan Pace has done just about everything he can (including borrowing from the future) to make this season a good one, because it might just save his job. It shouldn’t, but it might. Would he really weaken what could be his final shot in Chicago in service of the future? It feels doubtful, especially when he can pretend that keeping Robinson is helping the development of Justin Fields, though that’s arguable at best.
