Five Out of the Box Ideas to Shakeup Halas Hall

The Chicago Bears are entering their most important stretch of the season. Their next four games include opponents with a combined 26-11 record. The team is also entering a part of the season where they must start showing that they can compete with good football teams and in games that matter.

If the Bears fail in this stretch, they’ll be looking at a 3-11 or 4-10 record heading down the final three games of the season, and if that happens, the Bears are probably going to be looking to make some changes.

If it trends this way, most likely the Bears will end up with a top two pick, and they’ll fire Matt Eberflus, retain Ryan Poles, and draft a new quarterback. But here are some ideas that are totally out of the box (I did not say they were all good ideas), but ideas that will get people talking and maybe change the way things are done at Halas Hall. Please note, these ideas are not tied together, they are all completely separate ideas.

Create a job for Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick is the greatest mind in the history of football. Yes, that mind might be 71 years old, and the fastball absolutely doesn’t have enough juice on it anymore, but having Bill Belichick in Lake Forest would absolutely be a benefit.

Would you want Belichick as your head coach at this point? Probably not. Do you want Bill Belichick in charge of your personnel? Not after some of the decisions he’s made over the last few years. But would you like Bill Belihick consulting on defensive schemes, helping put together week to week schedules, help set expectations, work in terms of how to best manage draft assets (the king of trading down), and several other aspects of football operations that the Patriots have been masters at for two and a half decades? Absolutely.

Bring in Belichick as some sort of full-time consultant. Make him a special consultant to the President or something. Use his brain. The Bears need change at Halas Hall. Kevin Warren wants things to change, bring in a guy who knows how to help create the right kind of football operations that the Patriots have been great at for a long time. Even if, at this point in his career, Belichick can no longer do it all when he’s trying to handle every aspect of football operations.

Trade for Sean McVay

If the Bears end up with two picks in the top five, keeping your higher pick to draft a quarterback and trading your other pick to the Los Angeles Rams to have Sean McVay would be a wild idea and probably would infuriate plenty of fans. How could you trade a pick that high for a coach?

Let me ask you this? Would you trade both of those draft picks away if I told you in return you’d get a top 10 quarterback in the league and a great offensive coach to go with it? Your response will be, you can’t guarantee the QB would be top ten. No, I can’t, but with McVay, the odds of that would increase dramatically.

If you bring in Sean McVay and tell him he’s picking either Caleb Williams or Drake Maye, it will be his decision, and he gets to be the guy to fix the Bears QB problem that has existed for 75 years? I would consider that if I was McVay. McVay has been wanting out of Los Angeles for the last couple of years and is certainly looking for a new challenge. Making the Bears hum at quarterback would be like being Theo Epstein and bringing a World Series to the Chicago Cubs, it’s a guaranteed spot in the Hall of Fame.

Trade for the Haul

So, let’s have some fun. Forget the coach or GM or anything here. Let’s say the Bears have the first pick and trade down. Let me just say, that will never happen. If this happens, the Bears will take a quarterback but if they don’t, what kind of trade could they get? We know Poles likes to get a top notch player in return as well, but the prospect level will be far greater than what Bryce Young or CJ Stroud would net. That means Poles could get more than he received from Carolina last year.

Atlanta currently sits with the 9th pick. So let’s have some fun. Let’s say they want to make a huge splash and get a big-time QB to go with their offensive personnel they’ve amassed. Let’s combine what Poles did last year and what the Browns did for Deshaun Watson.

Falcons receive number one overall.

Bears receive Drake London, 9th overall in 2024, 3rd round pick in 2024, first round pick in 2025, first round pick in 2026.

Would the Falcons do it? Who knows, but think about the talent you would infuse into the team and surround Justin Fields if they did.

Draft Marvin Harrison, Jr with the first overall pick

If the Bears land the first pick, of course they’ll take one of these great QB prospects, right? Well, what if they just said, you know what, we are taking the best player available?

I know the word generational was attached to Caleb Williams and perhaps people spoke too soon. He’s a great prospect, he’s going to be one of the best QB prospects over the last 10 years, but will he be the best since Andrew Luck? Since Peyton Manning? He doesn’t appear to be at that level.

What if you take the lower pick and trade down for additional draft capital and with the first overall pick you take the guy that’s going to be Calvin Johnson? You just take the one guy who truly is a generational talent and figure the rest out later.

It would turn the NFL Draft on its head. Suddenly the team with the 3rd pick has to totally redraw their draft strategy, and they’ll have 15 minutes to do it. It’s unorthodox, it would never happen, but Marvin Harrison is the most slam-dunk prospect in this entire draft.

Trade the number one pick for a quarterback

Here’s a wild idea, the Chicago Bears can never get the quarterback right, so what if they just brought in a quarterback who is already right? Who knows what teams might be willing to reset their QB clock with either Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. It may not be anyone worth doing, but maybe the Buffalo Bills want to reload and Josh Allen could be had. Maybe there is still bad blood with the Ravens and Lamar Jackson could be had. The trades for Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson were insanely high, but nobody had an asset like the Bears would with the number one pick and an easy path to a hot-shot rookie QB.

The Chiefs, Bengals, Bills, Chargers, and all may just hang up the phone on Ryan Poles, but they may not. So you ask yourself this? How many QBs currently in the league would you trade for the first overall pick? Figure out that list and make those calls.

Would any of these moves happen? Almost certainly not. Are these all good ideas? I’m not endorsing all of them either. All I’m saying is that small changes at Halas Hall haven’t worked for three decades, perhaps the franchise would benefit from doing something bold.

All of these moves would create a lot of debate and a lot of excited fans and a lot of furious fans. George McCaskey would never try something like this, but does Kevin Warren have it in his bones? This offseason, regardless of what happens, looks like it’s going to be a compelling one in Chicago.