Bear Digest

Grading the Ryan Bates Trade

Bears GM Ryan Poles used a low-value fifth-round pick wisely by acquiring an experienced player he's had his eye on for two years.

Gene Chamberlain

Grading the Ryan Bates Trade
Grading the Ryan Bates Trade /
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The rush to judgment has become popular, even required nowadays after any NFL team does anything short of firing the cleaning crew at team headquarters.

There might even be someone out there grading teams on this, who knows?

People on social media are grading trades now seconds after they've occurred, as if they're clairvoyant and immediately know what the player acquired will do on a new team in a new offense or defensive system with new teammates.

It happened again on Monday night when Bears GM Ryan Poles traded for guard/center Ryan Bates and gave up a fifth-round draft pick to the Buffalo Bills.

"There he goes again, giving up the future for the present," came an outcry from the belly achers on social media.

If you stop and think about it for a while instead of posting kneejerk reactions, it's obvious why this was an entirely logical move.

Here's a grade for the trade a day later, after sitting back and weighing what they've really done.

Grading Ryan 

Bates Trade

A+++  Poles gets the highest mark possible for this trade because it's entirely logical. That's all you can really measure at this point.

The Bears made this trade for a low-cost possible starting center or guard, likely one who will be a transitional starter ahead of a young, developing center who is drafted. Perhaps they'll even sign a free agent yet and Bates will be the backup, filling the exact role intended last year for Lucas Patrick. If you remember, Cody Whitehair was slated to be center and Patrick only the backup guard and center. It didn't turn out this way due to injuries to various assorted players on the line.

So at worst, they have a useful player who has 19 starts and has played in 73 NFL games. He started in almost a full season in 2022.

He has experience in the NFL. For an offensive lineman, this is priceless. 

If a player who might not be expected to be a permanent, full-time starter and long-term starter for a team has this quality, it puts both them and the team far ahead of where they'd be if they had to rely on a rookie in the case event of an injury.

A rookie offensive lineman often needs to have his shoes tied for him. It's a different game than in college, where they are blocking about one man per team capable of playing pro ball on Sundays, or maybe three or four in the SEC. 

Linemen drafted in the last three rounds are usually even more likely to be almost useless at the beginning of their careers.

This is why it seems Poles staged a real coup by drafting Braxton Jones as a fifth-round left tackle who started for two seasons immediately and has relatively high blocking grades from Pro Football Focus.

Here are the numerical facts:

There were 18 offensive linemen chosen in the last three rounds of the 2023 draft and that's a possible 306 starts for those 18 offensive linemen. Those 18 combined to start 24 games last year, or 7.8% of all games.

Last season 54% of all offensive linemen drafted appeared in less than half of the games. That's not saying they started in less than half the games. They appeared in less than half, This can be walking onto the field for one special teams play.

These are not unusual numbers. It's a number similar to every other season.

So if you can bring in an experienced lineman at a low cost of about $4.25 million a year, and they'll either back up or start for a portion of the season, you're much better off giving up a fifth-, sixth- or seventh-round pick.

What about young developing players? 

This can happen over time but the Bears had that year already when they force unprepared rookies onto the field or need them to develop quickly. They don't need to fill starting spots with untested rookies, aside from at quarterback. If they happen to develop quickly, fine but they don't even need to have a late-round backup lineman developing. It's better to have experience in the event of an emergency, like an injury.

Last year the Bears had eight total starts from all the players drafted after the second round, and this was considered a successful draft. They had some useful play from young backups like Roschon Johnson and Tyler Scott, but there were four starts each from Terell Smith and Scott and no other starts from anyone third round or later.

So if you need experienced depth on the offensive line, giving up a fifth-round draft pick is not a huge price to pay. It's nothing, actually, because the fifth-round pick isn't really worth all that much. 

Beyond that, the Bears have obviously had their eye on Bates since Poles took over as GM. He tried to sign Bates as a restricted free agent in 2022 and the Bills matched it.

So getting Bates, who was only a little-used backup last year after starting almost all of 2022, is a bit of a coup.

If the Bears are drafting a center, they don't need to throw the rookie player out into the middle of the line, making changes on the line of scrimmage to the blocking scheme on a play with rookie quarterback Caleb Williams behind him. It's an invitation to disaster

Rookie centers often struggle, like quarterbacks do or even worse. Giants center John Michael Schmitz was one of the hot commodities in the draft last year and has skills to play the game, but as a rookie last year he was graded 36th out of 36 NFL centers who had at least 277 pass blocking plays by Pro Football Focus. The Jets' Joe Tippman was the other rookie center starter who had everyone's eye and he was graded 22nd.

It takes someone with experience at the position, so the Bears added this person and at the cost of a fifth-round pick which most often does not produce a starter or even one who develops into a starter.

They have a few starters on the team taken after the fourth round besides Jones, like at running back, where players are badly underpaid and underappreciated. Khalil Herbert is in that category. Wideout Darnell Mooney is one of the very few Day 3 receivers from his draft class in Round 4 or later to become a starter.

This Bears roster has been developing and no longer dependent upon forcing rookies out onto the field to start too soon. The longer this regime is in place, the fewer opportunities and the less they need for a fifth-round draft pick to develop into an immediate contributor. 

Why would you want the fifth-round pick to develop quickly this year for a job when you can have an experienced player there like Bates? If you see a need for someone younger there for the future, then just draft one in the first two or three rounds when they're more likely to have higher talent levels. For this year, you've got an experienced player for the spot.  

So give Poles that A-plus and throw on a few more pluses after that for this trade if you have to, if you even need to have a grade for something as inconsequential as a trade for one single player who may or may not even be a starter.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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