It’s hard for me to wrap my head around giving up a high second round draft pick just so that we can pay him top dollar. I know all the arguments for it, and I get that an edge of that quality is unlikely to make it to free agency, but overpaying is still overpaying. And the draft capital and salary cap space we’re giving up, if used separately, would add more utility to a roster than spending both on one player. Which makes this an overpay.
The point is that once it became clear Washington couldn’t extend him, there was a 100% chance he would get traded to someone, and an extremely high likelihood that whoever traded for him would extend him. So if not the Bears, it would have been somebody else.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around giving up a high second round draft pick just so that we can pay him top dollar. I know all the arguments for it, and I get that an edge of that quality is unlikely to make it to free agency, but overpaying is still overpaying. And the draft capital and salary cap space we’re giving up, if used separately, would add more utility to a roster than spending both on one player. Which makes this an overpay.
Except that he literally was a couple of months away from making it to free agency. Clearly, Washington wasn’t going to extend him.
The point is that once it became clear Washington couldn’t extend him, there was a 100% chance he would get traded to someone, and an extremely high likelihood that whoever traded for him would extend him. So if not the Bears, it would have been somebody else.