Bears Draft 2021: Grade the Trade Day 3

Pace has a tradition of sliding back in order to recoup value and to boost his total number of selections after trading up. He’s done it again, swapping #208 in order to pick up #217 and #250 from the Seattle Seahawks.

Previous times Pace has traded down include letting Arizona come up for Budda Baker (Pace came away with Adam Shaheen, Tarik Cohen, and another pick that he later traded) and earlier when he played musical chairs swapped picks to end up with Cody Whitehair and Deon Bush (instead of either Jarran Reed or Reggie Ragland, depending on how you want to look at things). The list goes on.

This trade is interesting from a points perspective.

The Rich Hill Chart calls it a major win for Chicago, giving up a single pick worth 3 points in order to pick up a pair of picks with a total value of 4 points. That’s what comes of how values are squeezed together at the end of the chart. Meanwhile, the Johnson chart flips the relative winner and loser. Here, Pace is considered to have given up an 8-point pick in order to gain a 5-point pick and a 1-point pick. So, the Bears either gained a bonus 33% of the available value or they lost 37% of the value. That’s a pretty dramatic swing.

In this case, it’s tough to say Pace lost. It’s a deep draft, he needs picks, and the “lost” value is largely on a chart that was developed when the draft wasn’t as deep. The more modern chart considers this to be a win. Some would use the Chase Stuart chart as a tiebreak here, and that calls it a definite loss for Chicago (0.6 AAV given up vs. 0.35 received).

I disagree. There is no sign that GMs care about the Chase Stuart chart, so expecting it to dictate values is unrealistic. I think the tiebreak, if there has to be one, is the number of picks. The success rate at this level in the draft is so low, that individual picks are almost the notional lottery tickets that they are often called. Pace traded one lottery ticket for two.

I will offer no analysis on the first player, both because that’s not the purpose of this article and I would just honestly be internet searching Khalil Herbert—I’ve done no prep work on him at all except to be able to tell you he was expected to go in Round 5 or Round 6.

I’ll update with the second player...

Grade the Trade: B+

Grade the Players: I’ll still leave that to fans over the next three years.

This seems like draft musical chairs, given all givens. Still, what do fans think?