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Bears may have quietly pulled off their smartest move of the offseason
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- Bears may have quietly pulled off their smartest move of the offseason
Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The Chicago Bears have had an up-and-down offseason by most standards, but one move that was universally praised was the team trading D.J. Moore for a second-round pick. It was the smartest move of the Bears' offseason, per Mike Sando of The Athletic .
The Chicago Bears best offseason move was trading their star receiver to the Buffalo Bills
Usually, a team getting rid of a player of the caliber of Moore is met with some skepticism. However, this was a great deal from the Bears in almost any manner that you view it. Moore was great for the Bears, but he was trending down under Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson.
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Moore had a career-high 1,364 yards with Justin Fields as his quarterback in 2023. He went down to 966 yards in 2024 and 682 yards in 2025 despite playing in every game. In 2024, he struggled to adjust with Williams, but in 2025, the team started to move on from him under Johsnon.
The Bears drafted Rome Odunze in the top ten, and he is entering his third NFL season. More than that, both Luther Burden and Colston Loveland were high draft picks with Johnson as the head coach. Both receivers finished on a positive note, and Loveland had more yards than Moore. Burden was much more efficient than Moore on a per-target basis.
So, the Bears moved on from a well-known receiver, but a player who would have been at least fourth in the pecking order in Chicago this year.
Beyond that, the Bears got to save a heap of cap space. They are the books for $12M this year, but they saved $16M in cap space. In 2027, the save $28M against the cap, something they never would have paid Moore. They also added a second-round pick to get off that cap space
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The Bears ended up using the pick to trade down and eventually acquire Sam Roush and Malik Muhammad. Meanwhile, the combined average salary of Devin Bush and Garrett Bradbury is still a bit less than what they saved from Moore. Those are likely two Week 1 starters, and the potential to add two impact players down the road. So, in total, the Bears traded Moore for something that looks like all four of those players combined. That is not bad for a player who did not fit into the plan beyond this year.
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This article was originally published on www.dawindycity.com as Bears may have quietly pulled off their smartest move of the offseason .
