The cost of moving up in the draft for the Bears

The NFL draft is now just three days away! All the months of speculation, testing, working out, tape reviewing and everything is about to come to a head.

For the Chicago Bears it means another chance to continue adding young talent to an overhauled roster. It is a chance to keep putting the last two seasons of sub-.500 football in the rearview mirror as general manager Ryan Pace and head coach John Fox keep building the team their way and bring in guys who fit their culture.

Thanks to Pace's shrewd moves, he's taken the team's seven picks and used players who were disappointing, underperforming or just didn't fit the culture and added two more selections bringing the team's pick total to nine.

The best thing about those nine picks is that seven of them are within the first 150 picks and five are within the first 110 selections.

This gives the Bears a shot at some of the better caliber talent in the draft.

It also gives the team the ammunition to move up should they choose.

But will it be worth it?

Using the tried-and-true Jimmy Johnson Draft Value Chart that is never more than a Google search away, it tells us that the Bears' picks are worth a total of 2,156.6 which breaks down thusly:

Now once you start adding in future draft picks things can get kind of murky. Since future picks aren't set in stone until well after the season is over and compensatory picks are handed out, teams like have to project where a team might be selecting.

For the purposes of this article, I'm mostly going to look at this year's picks as catalysts for moving around. Assuming the Bears improve like fans believe they should and factoring in how John Fox teams improve, I would say that next year's first round pick would fall into the late-teen, early-20s, meaning that their subsequent picks would be in the early back-half of each round. Keep that in mind if you wish to throw next year's picks into prospective trades.

As for this season, it's going to be tough for the Bears to move up in round one.

Say, hypothetically, that DeForest Buckner, Jalen Ramsey or Ezekiel Elliott get outside the top five (one of them likely will anyway but stay with me) and the Bears decide they want to go get him before Baltimore, the 49ers or the Browns has a shot.

The Ravens' No. 6 pick is worth 1,600 points, so the Bears would have to add 350 points in order to swap up with them. In order to get close to that 1,600 value, the Bears would have to package No. 11 and No. 41 and get back Baltimore's two fourth rounds, Nos. 104 and 130, which are worth 82 and 42 points respectively.

The Bears would have to like one of those players an awful lot to give up two early selections like that, especially when those first two picks should be returning two possible day-one impact players.

Another scenario that to me seems a little more likely, would be the Bears packaging their second and third round selections to jump back into the late first round should a player they really be there. Nos. 41 and 72 combine for 720 points which could slot them back into Pittsburgh's No. 1 selection at No. 25.

If they waited until one of the last two picks of the first round it could garner them one of the Super Bowl teams' late-third round selections.

With all that being said, I think Pace will field calls and perhaps if a player very high on their board slips he might make a few calls himself but for the most part, I believe that Pace has worked too hard to harvest picks to start moving up arbitrarily. The Bears have too many gaps to fill to worry about getting one great player right now and it would make more sense for them to let the draft come to them.

But, it's always fun to say "what if..."

What fair-value points trade scenarios can you come up with?