There's no way to sugarcoat the magnitude of the Khalil Mack trade: it's easily the Bears' biggest transaction since Jerry Angelo shipped out two 1st-round picks and a 3rd-rounder to the Broncos in exchange for Jay Cutler and a 5th-round choice.
While the exact specifications of the conditions of the late 2020 pick coming to the Bears are unknown right now, the basic deal is as follows:
Raiders Get
2019 1st-round pick
2020 1st-round pick
2020 3rd-round pick
2019 6th-round pick
Bears Get
OLB Khalil Mack
2020 2nd-round pick
2020 6th-round pick (conditionally could become a 5th-round pick)
There are so many issues in play here and thoughts that accompany them. Here's a run through a number of them:
1. The 2018 Bears just got way more interesting.
A couple of weeks ago, I picked the Bears to go 6-10 this year with the following comment: "the Bears are mostly talented, but the abject lack of a pass rush dooms them." Well now, about that second clause.
The 3-4 defense only works with constant pressure off of the edge collapsing the pocket. The Bears just went from having a job share between Sam Acho and Aaron Lynch to playing arguably the best pass rusher in the league on the edge.
Prior to the trade, the Bears were overloaded at inside linebacker (Roquan Smith, Danny Trevathan, and Nick Kwiatkoski), combined a star lineman (Akiem Hicks) with a plus interior starter (Eddie Goldman), featured a pair of stud starting safeties (Adrian Amos, Eddie Jackson), and has a couple of in-prime corners on the outside (Kyle Fuller, Prince Amukamara) with 1st-round pedigrees.
Add it all up and there should be nine plus starting positions on the defense. That's the foundation of a special season. The two remaining spots -- defensive end and the other outside linebacker spot -- also feature plenty of promise. At OLB, 2016 9th overall pick Leonard Floyd is due for a breakout after flashing in prior years but struggling with injuries. Lynch, Acho, and rookie Kylie Fitts now fit much better into their roles having been knocked down a peg. At DE, projected starter Jonathan Bullard played well in a job share last year and promising former undrafted rookie Roy Robertson-Harris should get a decent run, too.
Depth figures to be strong in the front seven (while it's weak at DT, Hicks' ability to slide inside elevates the floor), but the secondary depth is a concern. Deon Bush and DeAndre Houston-Carson have underwhelmed at safety while the cornerback depth is a bright flashing red light: Marcus Cooper is awful, Bryce Callahan is limited to slot duties, Sherrick McManis is a special teamer, and Kevin Toliver is an undrafted rookie. Gulp.
Still, it's tough not to be giddy about the toys that Vic Fangio now has at his disposal, headlined by the ultra-elite Mack.
The offense figures to lag behind the defense all year as sophomore QB Mitch Trubisky adjusts to his entirely new receiving options. More alarming, the offensive line figures to be a concern with below-average starting tackles and poor depth behind them. Nevertheless, there's enough there on offense to offer excitement.
Given Mack's addition, are the 2018 Bears a serious playoff contender? Ryan Pace absolutely must believe so, regardless of what he says in public. There's no sense in making this move unless he believes that a Y1 playoff berth is in the cards. I certainly do see it as a given, but it's a much more realistic possibility today than it was a few days ago. That's nifty. I'm much more excited as a result.
2. The financial outlay for Mack was massive but expected.
$141 million is a ton of money. No way to minimize that. Functionally, Mack is locked in through 2021. He can be cut before the 2022 season with $6.8 million of dead cap space left behind. Obviously if that happens, it'll be a nightmare for the Bears.
There's not much to say about the contract except this: Mack is now the highest paid defensive player in league history, surpassing Aaron Donald a day after he reached such lofty status. Mack deserves to be exceptionally highly paid. Moving on.
3. It will be extremely difficult for Mack to outperform his contract.
The Bears traded for Mack to be an impact, star-level force on the edge, not to be a value proposition financially. That's sensible.
But when evaluating the team, it's important to sign players to contracts where their value exceeds their allotment of cap space. For Mack, by setting a new top of the market, he'll need to play at MVP levels for three or four years to provide such value individually. It's just implausible.
This trade will be evaluated based on wins and losses in the coming years. But it should also be evaluated by paying attention to the individual value of Mack himself.
4. The draft compensation surrendered by Pace is unparalleled in league history and will likely cripple the franchise into the coming decade.
There's no way to soften the blow here: beginning with the Anthony Miller trade and following with the Mack deal to a much greater degree, Pace has shown a penchant for falling in love with a particular player. This is a very risky mode of operation for one obvious reason: players don't win games/championships, teams do. Teams are comprised of lots of players, upwards of 30 of which play meaningful snaps each game. Games are generally best equipped to win games when most/all of those 30 players are good. The easiest way to accomplish this, by far, is by having a whole bunch of underpaid players complemented by a handful of market-cost players. It's really the only way to survive in a capped salary situation.
Unfortunately for the Bears, as a result of the Miller and Mack deals, the Bears won't be able to build meaningful depth into the next decade unless they hit on a number of mid-to-late round picks. That's a poor strategy for team building.
Looking at the Mack deal alone, we can wipe out the value of the late-round picks: they're likely both 6th-rounders and I don't subscribe to the notion of value discounting of picks: the 2022 Bears are just as important as the 2019 Bears to me, even if they aren't to Ryan Pace. In essence, we're looking at two 1st-round picks and a 3rd-round pick for a 2nd-round pick and an All-Pro. We've already discussed the implausibility of Mack providing surplus value on his new contract, so let's evaluate the draft capital assigned to him in this deal.
First, a disclaimer: yes, there's an ultra-rosy universe out there in which the Bears win the Super Bowl while the Raiders collapse pre-Vegas, pushing the Raiders to the top of draft rounds and the Bears to the bottom. If the picks end up as #24, #32, and #96 heading to the Raiders in exchange for #33, it looks great. That's both (i) overwhelmingly unlikely to happen, and (ii) the wrong way to evaluate a trade where the picks involved are unknown. The best example here is the Texans, who figured that they were trading a late-1st in 2018 for DeShaun Watson as a team loaded with star power but with a crippling hole at quarterback.
Football season arrived, both JJ Watt and Watson suffered significant injuries, and Houston conveyed #25 and #4 for #12. Ouch.
While the odds of that scenario were low, they weren't infinitesimal. Star players get hurt all the time, torpedoing seasons. Had only one of Watt and Watson gotten hurt, Houston likely would've instead dealt #25 and #15 for #12, a terrible value proposition.
With that said, the Bears figure to make the jump from bottom-of-the-barrel to middle class in 2018 given Mack's acquisition. If they reach .500 for the first time since 2013, they'll likely pick around #16. In 2020, the hope is that they kick things up a notch and reach the playoffs, landing the pick somewhere in the low-20s. Let's say #22. That makes their 3rd-round pick #86. Oakland is less clear, so let's plop their 2020 odds at a bit less than average, making their 2nd-round pick #45.
Using the Chase Stuart chart, the Bears traded away 38.0 draft value points (16.9 + 14.9 + 6.2) to acquire 10.4 points. That 27.6 surplus points represents the value surrendered to give Mack the richest, and most cap-absorptive, deal for a defensive player in history.
27.6 points is exactly the value of the #3 overall pick in the draft. Yowzers. As a median estimate, that's a terrifying proposition. If a key Bears player gets hurt and the team struggles during the next two years, the team will surrender well in excess of the top overall pick. Then again, if Mack catalyzes a jump to constant contention, the value slides closer to the middle of the first round. Even with the economics, just about every team in the league would've traded a mid-1st-round pick for Mack.
This will define Pace's tenure as GM as much as the Trubisky trade-and-draft.
5. The combination of the cap space and draft capital used to acquire and keep Mack is such that the Bears will have a very hard time progressing as an organization.
Any success moving forward is predicated on (i) Mack remaining an All-Pro caliber cornerstone, and (ii) Trubisky exploding into a plus starter. With the opportunity to add impact talent via the draft, the Bears possessed other viable pathways to contention in the event that Trubisky struggled or even flopped. That's no longer the case. Now it is truly Trubisky or bust.
Even if Trubisky makes a star turn, the Bears are going to find it extraordinarily difficult to surround him with impact weapons in the coming years. Draft picks -- and particularly high draft picks -- offer unparalleled value when building a team as they tend to be players who well outperform their contracts. Successful teams need those. The Bears are now left hoping against all hope that Pace's 2016 and 2017 draft classes were unequivocal grand slams. We'll see.
6. It's so hard to get your hands on a player like Khalil Mack.
I appreciate the rarity of the moment. The last time a pass rusher of this ilk hit the market, DeMarcus Ware bolted to Denver and had a ring on his finger 22 months later. Mack is decidedly better than Ware was then. For that reason alone, I appreciate the unique nature of such a monumental talent shifting teams.
The last time a trade of something close to this magnitude materialized, Jared Allen was heading northward out of Kansas City for Minneapolis, where he terrorized the Bears and the NFC North for a football generation (and stopped getting behind the wheel while drunk).
7. One unintended consequence of the trade: the focus is squarely off of Smith now.
Missing all of training camp surely didn't endear Smith to his teammates and it similarly gave him little room for error with the fans and coaches: if he got off to a rough start in his rookie season, the boo birds would be plentiful. It's unknown how that affects a young player, but the odds are strong that it doesn't help.
Instead, the overwhelming focus on the Bears is squarely on Mack now. Smith can more or less ease into his professional career with a significantly dimmer spotlight shining on him. Hopefully that helps.
8. There's an exceptionally good chance that Mack plays himself into the Hall of Fame.
It should always be mentioned when a transaction involves a player with a real shot at the HOF. Mack is a unicorn.
9. Superstar athletes tend to age much better than their more average counterparts.
This is not a controversial take.
However, elite pass rushing 4-3 defensive ends and 3-4 outside linebackers age much better than most. (*sample size warning*) Two recent Bears pass rushers offer specific hope.
Julius Peppers came to the Bears for his age-30 season, providing star level production for three years before a fourth above-average season preceded his departure. Productivity through age-33 was great. (Peppers has since provided average defense for four additional years, an even more impressive feat.)
Similarly, Jared Allen offered elite production into his 30s, starring still as a 31-year-old for the Vikings in 2013. The wheels largely fell off once he joined the Bears at 32, but that doesn't negate his prior production.
The Bears are locked into Mack for four years with the fifth year operating as something of a team option: the Bears owe Mack $24.55M in 2022 against $6.8M of dead cap money. There is no dead money in subsequent years as of now, though it is highly likely that some of Mack's base salaries in the coming years are restructured into bonuses for cap spreading purposes that allocate money to the cap in 2023 and beyond. Regardless, the first four years of Mack's deal cover ages 27 through 30, suggesting that the Bears really do stand to buy some excellent (if not prime) years.
10. Mack adds as much value as any one non-quarterback player could to the 2018 Bears.
As I said above, the glaring weakness for this year's squad defensively was at rush linebacker. Without Mack, the 6-10 season would be a frustrating outcome for a team with all of the other pieces in place.
Now, with Mack in tow, 2018 looks much more like a springboard. The defense is certainly playoff-caliber while the offense has the tools to get there if everything comes together. That's not altogether likely, however, so a .500 record against a subpar schedule seems prudent. Let's put the Bears at 8-8 now instead of 6-10.
Let's also call out the obvious: if Trubisky makes a sophomore leap, the sky is now the limit for these Bears. That was an unfathomable statement last week.
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