Houston Texans head coach Lovie Smith did his former team a huge favor on Sunday.
By deciding to go for a two-point conversion (and converting it) in the final minute, Smith’s team was able to beat the Indianapolis Colts for their third win of the 2022 season.
That win, combined with the Chicago Bears loss to the Minnesota Vikings, means the Bears managed to sneak ahead of the Texans for the top pick in the 2023 NFL draft.
This has a chance to be a franchise-changing moment for the Bears in their rebuild, and it gives them several options to work with throughout the offseason.
What makes the Bears situation so intriguing is that the consensus top pick is Alabama quarterback Bryce Young.
But the Bears are not really in a position to draft a quarterback because they seem to be set at the position with Justin Fields.
Fields still has a ways to go in his development, but he showed incredible progress in the second half of the season with both his arm and his ability to run.
He ran for nearly 1,200 yards despite missing two games, and also threw 12 touchdowns to only five interceptions over his final eight games.
He should be their guy.
The Bears also have a massive need on defense where they finished with one of the league’s worst units.
After Young, there are several top-tier defensive players at the top of the draft including Alabama’s Will Anderson and Georgia’s Jalen Carter.
Both could be franchise-changers on the defensive front.
The simplest solution is that Chicago simply takes one of them with the top pick.
But the more exciting option is that the Bears put a for sale sign up on that No. 1 overall pick and see if another top-five team (Seattle, Arizona, Indianapolis) might want to move up to secure one of the draft’s top quarterbacks.
With Young, C.J. Stroud (Ohio State), and Will Levis (Kentucky) all looking like high first round picks the Bears might be able to move back a couple of spots, get a bounty of draft picks in a trade, and still get their defensive star.
Stockpiling extra picks would also be beneficial because Chicago’s second-round pick (the No. 32 overall pick in this class because Miami was stripped of its first-round pick) is going to the Pittsburgh Steelers as part of the Chase Claypool trade.
Chicago did get a second-round pick back by trading Roquan Smith to Baltimore, but it will be later in the round.
