One of the biggest quarterback dominoes of the 2024 NFL offseason has fallen, with the Chicago Bears trading Justin Fields to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday night. The Steelers sent a 2025 conditional sixth-round pick to the Bears, and the pick would become a fourth-rounder if Fields plays 51% of Pittsburgh's offensive snaps this season.
The move seemingly clears the way for the Bears to select USC quarterback Caleb Williams (or one of the other top signal-caller prospects in this class) at the 2024 NFL draft in April. Fields, meanwhile, will join Russell Wilson in Pittsburgh, who signed a one-year deal for the veterans minimum before free agency began. (The Denver Broncos are still paying him after releasing him this offseason.) Wilson is expected to be the starter at the moment, with Fields in the backup role. Kenny Pickett, last season's starter in Pittsburgh, was traded to the Eagles on Friday.
So who won the deal? Did Chicago get enough in return -- and could it have done better? Does the Wilson-Fields combo make sense in Pittsburgh? Let's grade the trade, taking into account factors like on-field impact, overall value for each side and the context of each team's short- and long-term QB outlooks.
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Grading the Steelers-Bears trade for Fields
Whatever you think of Fields as a player, the Steelers just got a backup quarterback who has started 38 games over the past three years. And they landed him for almost nothing. The 2025 sixth-round pick that the Bears got back converts to a fourth-rounder if Fields plays more than half of the Steelers' offensive snaps in 2024, in which case the Steelers will have landed a starting quarterback for a fourth-round pick. As with the Wilson signing, the move has practically zero risk for the Steelers yet boasts plenty of upside. And if something happens with Wilson -- be it injury or poor performance -- and they need the backup to play, they have one who has been a starter and for whom the situation won't be too big.
Furthermore, if the Steelers can iron out the remaining issues with Fields' game while he's in a backup role, Fields could become an option for them in 2025 and beyond. He threw 40 touchdown passes to 30 interceptions over three seasons in Chicago but showed flashes at times and made an impact as a rusher. Per ESPN Stats & Information, Lamar Jackson (2,906) is the only quarterback in NFL history with more rushing yards in his first three seasons than Fields (2,220).
And hey, they can say whatever they want in March about Wilson being the starter and Fields being the backup, but it's not completely inconceivable that Fields could win the job with a strong training camp. Fields actually has the higher QBR over the past two seasons (51 compared to 44). Regardless, the Steelers have set themselves up with options at the most important position. And even if neither one of them turns out to be a good option, they've spent minimally in trades for the pair, and they're not committed to either beyond this season.
As for the Bears, it seems fairly clear they misread the Fields market early on and ended up taking far less in return than they were initially seeking. Chicago went into this process hoping to get a second-round pick for Fields. But once former Patriots quarterback Mac Jones got traded to the Jaguars for a sixth-rounder and potentially interested teams started trading for the likes of Sam Howell, Desmond Ridder and Pickett, the market for Fields' services bottomed out.
The Bears could have held on to Fields until the draft or even throughout the summer, waiting for some team to get desperate enough to offer more. That would have made business sense. But having Fields and a rookie top-pick quarterback on the roster at the same time would have been an uncomfortable situation. It also wouldn't have been fair to Fields.
So for doing the right thing as opposed to the strictly business thing, I added a "plus" to Chicago's low grade here. The Bears could have traded Fields for more than this last year, and they probably could have done better than this if they'd moved him a month ago. They kept waiting for someone to meet their terms. No one ever did, and it cost them.
Grade for the Steelers: A
