QB Carousel: Danny Parkins, 670 The Score

Step right up here.

Don't be shy. The Super Bowl is over, but the NFL quarterback carousel is just beginning. You've got to ask yourself a question.

Do I feel lucky? What does the future hold for all 32 NFL teams at the QB position? Now I'm going to give you an opportunity to spin this wheel right here. Let's spin the wheel and find out which teams we hit today.

The Chicago Bears. You can listen to him on the score. He does a great job.

Afternoon drive. Danny Parkins joins us right now. Danny, you guys got to be on cloud nine in Chicago.

You think you have a franchise quarterback and your GM and coach are starting to surround them with some actual talent. Yeah, it's very exciting, but I mean, man, we need to go to Vegas together. You spun a wheel and it landed on Chicago and I just happened to be on the line. What if it landed on Detroit?

Was I going to be talking about Jared Goff? This is an unbelievable fortune that you have, Gelb. It's amazing. That's why I'm a good blackjack player. And sometimes as long as the odds are uploaded correctly on our company's website, when it comes to Kentucky Derby, I usually win more than I lose, so they say.

Our company has a website? Not very well. Danny Parkins and Zach Gelb are both free agents right now.

No, no, I've said much more incriminating things than that. But no, yes, the Bears have a quarterback, they think and hope, and they are adding pieces around him. They certainly are. I thought the trade down from one to nine was incredible and inspired for a number of reasons. Like the Bears need to spend money to get to the spending floor. And the free agent class, where they've got the most cap space in the NFL, is not very good. And it certainly isn't very good at wide receiver.

If D.J. Moore was in this wide receiver class, he'd be commanding a $100 million contract. Instead, you get him for three years and $52 million left on the contract we signed before last year. He's only 25 years old, and so it helps you spend to your floor. It gives Justin Fields a legitimate number one receiver.

It bumps down Darnell Mooney and Chase Claypool in importance. And you stay in the top ten when presumably four of the top eight picks are going to be quarterbacks. So you still should be in a position to get a top five non-quarterback on your board. I know that there was some talk, and I thought it was a lot of jackassery, about the Bears moving on from Fields and taking a quarterback at one. Do you think that's the right decision in what they did in the last few days? I think it was the right decision. I think that Fields more than showed enough to deserve some help, given what he showed with no help.

And don't get it twisted. I mean, the Bears were the worst passing offense in the NFL by far. But they had a good to great five-week stretch where they showed some really incredible potential, where they were averaging nearly 30 points per game, dominated the Patriots on Monday Night Football, put up 29 against the Cowboys, had a very inspiring stretch of play where it seemed like things were clicking. And then Fields was heard and Mooney got heard and Claypool got heard and seems kind of adjusted to the Bears' adjustment.

And the season did not end very well. But when you talk about a quarterback in Bryce Young who is small and a quarterback in C.J. Stroud who would just be the next Ohio State quarterback and Will Levis and Anthony Richardson with their questions coming out, there was no Joe Burrow or Andrew Luck or Trevor Wentz or Caleb Williams level prospect.

If that was the case, it would have been a much different conversation. But given that there was uncertainty at the top of the draft and given that you clearly could get so much for the number one overall pick and the Bears have so many holes, I think it was the obvious move on the chessboard. And we're going to find out how far Fields could take them and how much success Fields could have because like you said, not only did you get more who had three 1,100 yard seasons with basically no one throwing in the football, but it moves down all these other guys like a Chase Claypool who's a fine wide receiver but isn't great in this league. And you've got to put the guy in a position to succeed to see what you really have. I think right now Fields could be a good quarterback and we'll see how great he could be, but they're giving him a chance at least.

Yeah, exactly right. And if it goes belly up, you have two first round picks next year, right? If Fields is bad, the Bears are probably bad. And if the Bears are bad, they probably have a top 10 pick. And if you've got a top 10 pick and you have Carolina's pick, which Carolina, if they're starting a rookie quarterback, they could be bad. Or maybe the rookie quarterback's good and their defense is pretty good and the NFC South is pretty bad. And it's late teens or the 20th pick.

Well, if you've got a top 10 pick and a top 20 pick, you could trade both of those and move into the top five and maybe select your quarterback next year if you wanted to. So I don't think that that's what their plan is, but I do think that's their insurance policy in case Justin Fields doesn't take the leap as a passer that they're expecting him to make in year three in the league, year two in Luke Getze's offense. What's kind of been the feel on now what they will do at nine? Could they trade back again or do you expect them to take a player at nine?

I think everything's on the board. I think they could trade up, you know, depending on how it goes in free agency. And they did not add a three technique. They did not add anyone on the defensive line. They kind of surprisingly added two linebackers. You know, if Jalen Carter falls out of the top five, I could see the Bears being the team that selects him at nine or maybe even trade up a spot or two to get him because the three technique is so important in Matt Eberfluss's 4-3 defense. So I could see that being an option. I think they, you know, easily could take a tackle to support Justin Fields and continue to build around him, whether it's Karis Johnson or Peter Skowronski. I think that's on the board. So I think that the trade down to nine really opened up the level of possibilities. Could they trade down a few more spots to get even more draft capital? Absolutely.

I think now there's much less urgency on what they need to do. But Ryan Paul did speak about blue players. That's how he grades them in the top tier guys, the blue chippers, if you will. He wants to be sure he comes out of this trap with one of those guys. So the beauty is in the eyes of a holder. But I guess the question is, how many blue chip players does he see in this draft? If he feels like there's more than nine, he could trade down less than 90 trades up nine.

Exactly. He probably is standing Pat Danny Parkins. I remember a few years ago when everyone said, oh, the Bengals should take it all fence alignment. They ended up taking Jamar Chase. I know that they just traded for DJ Moore and at the deadline they got Chase Claypool.

And all these mock drafts make it for what it's worth. We don't see a wide receiver going in the top ten. Could you actually see them taking the best wide receiver available?

That would surprise me now. Jackson Smith and Jigba has a relationship with Fields from Ohio State. The guys who came out of Ohio State, like Chris Olave, say he was the best of the bunch when it was Ham Olave and Garrett Wilson. Even if he didn't produce that way this past year. Ryan Polls said, remember where I came from, which is Kansas City.

And they kept adding weapons and weapons and weapons. So I don't think you can rule it out as a possibility. But when you trade a second round pick, which ends up being the 32nd pick in the draft for Chase Claypool, and you trade the number one overall pick in part for DJ Moore, that would be a tremendous allocation of draft capital if you then use the top ten pick on a receiver this year. I think it's on the board that they add a receiver at some point in the draft and maybe with one of their four picks in the top 64. But with the ninth overall pick or wherever they end up drafting first in the first round, a wide receiver would be borderline shocking at this point given the number it needs on the team. Honestly, I guess the best thing that would be possible for the Bears would get a first round pick by moving back a few spots this year. Like a few years ago when the Giants made that trade with them and you guys moved up to go get field. If they get another first round pick and move back a few spots, I think it's kind of worth it at this point.

Yeah, I think that's in play. I floated today, would you trade the ninth pick to Houston for the 12th pick in Laramie-Tunsell? And then the opportunity to sign Laramie-Tunsell to a huge deal because you don't necessarily feel like there's a franchise left tackle out there. I think the DJ Moore trade, again, was instructive in they need to spend money, they want to spend money on premium talent, and there might not be premium talent at marquee positions in free agency.

So what's a way to do that? It's to trade for the guys who are already expensive. That's what they did with DJ Moore, even though his contract is very reasonable. But instead of paying Jacoby Myers in free agency, they traded for DJ Moore and that's their wide receiver edition.

So I think that could still be coming as well. Danny Parkins, I got your thoughts on Justin Fields, but like the fan base. This has been a tortured fan base, they've never had a quarterback.

Do they believe in Fields or is it still like a little, you know, be skeptical just because of the nature of it? You know, I always think it's tough when like the talk show host is like asked, you know, the fan base is not a monolith, right? Like there are some people that love him, some people that don't.

But I would say the majority believe in Justin Fields. I mean, hell, he had the number one selling jersey in the state of Wisconsin last year, okay? Like there's a lot of excitement. He's the most exciting offensive football I have seen in my lifetime watching the Bears. I was born in 1986, so I miss, you know, the Walter Payton era of Bears football. Brandon Marshall, Matt Forte, Alshon Jeffery, Devin Hester as a special teamer. Like that's the list of exciting Bears in my lifetime for football in their hands. Justin Fields is clear cut number one.

I'm 36 years old. So the majority of Bears fans believe the majority of Bears fans are excited. But to your point about how fortunate the fan base is with the quarterback position, it's the only franchise in NFL history to never have a 4,000 yard passer. Not a 5,000 yard, a 4,000 yard passer. It's the only franchise in NFL history to never have a 30 touchdown passer. Not a 40, not a 50, 30 touchdown passes. So this is also a fan base that believed in Jay Cutler and Rex Grossman and Cade McNown and Mitch Trubisky.

Like we fall easily, we fall hard because we frankly will fall for anybody. It's arguable that the best Bears quarterback of my lifetime has been Eric Kramer. So it's a fan base that will cling to any sign of hope frankly at the quarterback position.

I would think Danny Parkins at the new stadium. There's got to be a statue built for Lovey Smith. You know, he certainly has the two biggest wins of the 21st century. The NFC championship in 2006 to send him to the Super Bowl where they ended up losing Peyton Manning. And then the week 18 game where he pulled off the miraculous win to snatch the number one pick away from the Houston Texans who were about to fire him and give it to his old team here in Chicago. So yeah, Lovey Smith's popularity. He was fired after a 10 win season and 10 win seasons have been very hard to come by. So his popularity has grown already since leaving Chicago. But it might be at an all time high since his departure right now. Two more football questions and then we'll let you run.

I filled in for you before with Filipponia on first and pods. Let me just get your thoughts about two other things around the NFL. Rogers, is he going to the Jets or are you a little looking at this right now and saying something fishy's going on that we haven't found out yet? I think he's going to the Jets and my most recent theory is that it's done. And that they are keeping it under wraps for some sort of like technical reason. Like that the Packers know it's happening, the Jets know it's happening, and they haven't necessarily like dotted an I or crossed the T. Or like everything on the trade compensation hasn't been finalized but like it's happening. Because why would he want to do this?

Like I know the idea that he wants like all the limelight and he just loves the attention and all that. But like okay fine you want to stick it to the Packers I suppose I could get that. But why would you want to make it more difficult for your new team to operate in free agency? So I think that he's going to the Jets and I think it's going to happen probably tomorrow. And certainly by Wednesday the start of the league year. And who's the Panthers take with a number one overall pick now? I trust the gambling market. C.J. Strada went from plus 160 to minus 300 basically within an hour of the move happening. Frank Reich likes big quarterbacks. So I think that you know no matter how much you know about sports no matter how much I know about sports the sharp gamblers know more than the two of us combined.

So if the gamblers are saying it's Strada I think it's Strada. Danny appreciate it thanks so much. Anytime man thank you.