Caleb Williams knows he’s the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears because of the historic trade the Carolina Panthers made for the first pick in 2023.
And he knows receiver DJ Moore is his top receiver because of the same deal.
“Obviously grateful that it happened and to be a Chicago Bear,” Williams said. “I’m not too deep into the history of kind of what happened, but I do know it got us a lot of different things — DJ and the picks, myself included.”
What Williams didn’t know is that those picks obtained by the Bears eventually turned into right tackle Darnell Wright, cornerback Tyrique Stevenson and punter Tory Taylor after more maneuvering by general manager Ryan Poles and his personnel staff during the draft.
Williams had to be told which teammates were added by the Bears through that trade — “It’s a good collection of players we have here,” he replied — while the others had to be informed of their places in what will go down as one of the most lopsided trades in NFL history.
“Niiiiice,” Wright said. “Oh, I had no idea. I don’t know anything about trades and all that. I’m happy we got some good players.”
When the Bears host the Panthers at Soldier Field on Sunday, Chicago will have five players on the field it acquired after the blockbuster trade with Carolina 18 months ago.
And the quarterback the Panthers traded up to get in 2023 — Bryce Young — will be on the sideline watching behind Andy Dalton, a former Bears stopgap starter.
“It’s really remarkable when you think about it, how it all fell together like that,” Bears coach Matt Eberflus said. “A lot of that’s luck, I mean a lot of that you can’t predict. But it’s also putting yourself in position. Ryan Poles and his staff did a great job of that.”
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After several years of going the rent-a-quarterback route with Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield, the Panthers decided to change tack and try to draft and develop a quarterback under a new coaching staff. But a late-season run under interim coach Steve Wilks in 2022 left the Panthers with a 7-10 record and the ninth pick in the draft. They knew they would have to orchestrate a trade to get the quarterback who was at the top of their draft board as early as the fall of ’22: Young, the Heisman Trophy winner at Alabama.
With the Las Vegas Raiders also eyeing a move up in the draft for Young, the Panthers were prepared to send several high draft picks to Chicago for the No. 1 pick. Their initial offer did not include a player. But as the talks would stall and heat back up, Poles asked former Carolina GM Scott Fitterer about edge rusher Brian Burns, defensive tackle Derrick Brown and Moore, all former first-rounders.
Thinking it would be easier to replace a top-end receiver, Fitterer agreed to include Moore in the deal, raising some eyebrows among Panthers players.
“Guys felt some type of way that he was gone because he was a main guy in this franchise,” cornerback Jaycee Horn said. “Any time you lose a guy like that or Brian Burns or Donte Jackson — it’s just a part of the business. But guys were definitely conflicted about it just because he was a big face in this locker room.”
Three days after completing the blockbuster trade — two firsts, two seconds and Moore — the Panthers signed Dalton to a two-year, free-agent deal to serve as a backup/mentor to the QB they would draft. Shortly after arriving in Charlotte, Dalton said it was pretty clear the choice would be Young.
“I got to meet several of the (quarterbacks) when they came in here throughout the process. I felt the meeting was different whenever I met Bryce,” Dalton said. “I sat with him in the QB room and talked with him for like five, 10 minutes with some of the other coaches, stuff like that.”
Asked to expand, Dalton added: “I thought he was different, and then you could tell they were really comfortable with Bryce.”
The Panthers did their due diligence on the other top quarterbacks, going to the pro days for C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson and Will Levis and hosting all but Levis on a pre-draft visit. But there was a sense inside the building that Young was the favorite from the start, according to four sources who were granted anonymity so that they could speak freely.
Panthers head coach Frank Reich, left, was fired 11 games into last season, and quarterback Bryce Young was benched after two games this year. (Bob Donnan / USA Today)
Shortly after Frank Reich was hired as head coach, he attended a pre-combine meeting with Fitterer and the team’s scouts. Fitterer asked the scouts if they traded up for the top pick, what quarterback they would want. They all said Young.
After firing Reich last November, owner David Tepper said last fall that the decision to take Young was unanimous among the coaches and scouts. But some assistants were intrigued by Stroud and thought too much emphasis was placed on the S2 cognitive test, which measures processing speed and is believed by some to be a good predictor of a quarterback’s success in the NFL. Others involved in the Panthers’ pre-draft discussions downplayed the role the S2 played, calling it a piece of the evaluation.
While Young posted a near-perfect score on the S2, Stroud reportedly fared considerably worse. But league officials told The Athletic that S2 officials flagged Stroud’s test result and informed teams it was “unreliable.”
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While Young had support across the league as the best QB in last year’s draft, other talent evaluators were concerned about his 5-foot-10, 204-pound frame, The Athletic’s Jeff Howe reported. The critiques of the Panthers’ decision to go with Young intensified as Stroud, taken No. 2, led the Houston Texans to the playoffs and was the Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Though Young bested Stroud in their head-to-head meeting in October, Young struggled with a lacking group of playmakers and an offensive line that allowed him to be sacked 62 times, the second-most for a rookie QB, behind David Carr’s 76.
But Reich — and later interim coach Chris Tabor — stuck with Young through a 2-15 season in which he finished with the league’s lowest passer rating and second-worst completion percentage (behind Levis).
Had the Panthers gone with Dalton, maybe the Panthers win a few more games and the Bears don’t wind up with the No. 1 pick. But the benching of Young wouldn’t come until his second season. And it happened in a hurry.
Being the offensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks provided Shane Waldron with opportunities to watch Caleb Williams at USC. That’s what happens when you work on the West Coast and you work for Pete Carroll, the former head coach of the Trojans.
“There were conversations about Caleb all the time,” Waldron said in an interview with The Athletic. “Like those Saturday nights when you’re at the hotel, you go through your stuff and the college games are on in the room (or) in the dining hall there, I can tell you USC was always going to find a way to be on TV.”
Seeing Williams play on the television broadcasts led to some early impressions for Waldron before he joined the Bears’ scouting process as the replacement for Luke Getsy as the offense’s play caller.
“It felt like every game he was in they were in till the end,” Waldron said. “Regardless of the score, he just had that ability to motivate people around them, make everyone around him better … whether it was him trying to run the ball and getting hit against Utah a couple times, but still doing a great job.
“And then the one in the end of the year, the end of his career — which I know he wants to have a different outcome there — but I think it was the UCLA game where they were down a little bit, and you see him just playing all the way till the end of that game the same way he was playing if they’re up by a bunch of points in some of the other games. So you had a chance to understand what he was about in terms of a fan standpoint.”
When Waldron first interviewed with the Bears, Eberflus and Poles provided him with glimpses of their vision for their team. Their full plans weren’t revealed but specific things were discussed. Waldron knew what the Bears had: the first pick in the 2024 draft, Moore as their No. 1 receiver and a young starting bookend tackle in Wright, the No. 10 pick.
“(It’s) really seeing how clear (Poles’) vision was for the team and how connected him and Coach Flus were, being on the same page and knowing what the plan was,” Waldron said. “But he’s done an unbelievable job of having the … ‘OK, if this happens, then we’ll go here. If this happens, we’ll go there,’ but having that long-term vision of what he wants to build.”
For the first pick, the Bears acquired Moore, the No. 9 pick in the 2023 draft, the No. 61 pick that year, a first-rounder in 2024 and a second-round selection in 2025 from the Panthers. Poles then turned that big move into smaller ones.
Wide receiver DJ Moore was the first player the Bears acquired in the trade with the Panthers. He’s still developing a connection with rookie quarterback Caleb Williams. (Troy Taormina / Imagn Images)
The Bears traded No. 9 to the Philadelphia Eagles for No. 10 and a fourth-round pick in 2024. The Eagles selected defensive tackle Jalen Carter. Chicago later traded up from No. 61 to No. 56 to draft Stevenson. The fourth-round selection in 2024 from the Eagles became the 122nd pick, which was used on Taylor this year.
Waldron didn’t need to be informed by Poles and Eberflus during his interview what having the first pick in 2024 meant for the Bears. But after he was hired, Waldron eagerly joined the scouting of the quarterback he saw so much of on television: Williams.
“When the draft process starts with the pro day, you start learning about the person, the intangibles, the football acumen, all the things that go into understanding what the guy is going to be like for the first pick,” Waldron said. “It was all positive — really right away once that process started.”
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Williams is four games into his rookie season. There is plenty for him to improve, starting with his chemistry with Moore. He doesn’t have close to the numbers that Jayden Daniels, the No. 2 pick this year, has quickly produced for the Washington Commanders.
But the positives on the field are starting to add up for Williams, along with glimpses of stardom. He’s calling out blitzes, changing his protections and making the right reads more often. His teammates have highlighted his leadership.
Williams’ 106.6 passer rating against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 4 was a new high. It included hitting Moore for a touchdown in the back of the end zone with a perfectly placed pass over a Rams linebacker.
“You learn from all your mistakes, and that’s what I’ve been doing,” Williams said. “Those interceptions, those messed up plays that I may have had, the rookie mistakes as they call them, just learning from those as fast as possible — not hanging my head for too long.”
Wright, meanwhile, will make his 22nd consecutive start at right tackle for the Bears on Sunday. Stevenson has settled in as the Bears’ starter opposite cornerback Jaylon Johnson. He earned NFC defensive player of the week honors for Week 1 after making a pick-six in the Bears’ win against the Tennessee Titans. It was the second time he’s earned that honor.
This week, Taylor earned NFC special teams player of the week honors after landing three punts inside the Rams’ 10 in the Bears’ victory at Soldier Field.
“He’s unbelievable,” Williams said. “The night we drafted him, that was the first time I’ve ever looked at a punter highlight tape.”
Tepper did some major housecleaning after Young’s rough rookie season. Besides Reich, who was fired after just 11 games, Tepper swept out Fitterer, the offensive staff and Samir Suleiman, who handled the team’s contracts and salary-cap management. The Panthers promoted Morgan from assistant GM, hired longtime Seattle Seahawks assistant Dave Canales as head coach and brought in former Kansas City Chiefs cap/contracts executive Brandt Tilis.
Canales was billed as a quarterback whisperer for his role in turning around Geno Smith in Seattle and Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay. But his whispering with Young lasted only two games.
After the Panthers managed 13 points in getting outscored by 60 the first two weeks, Canales — along with Morgan and Tilis — benched Young, which Tepper signed off on, according to a source who was granted anonymity so that he could speak freely.
The move paid immediate dividends. In his first start — a 36-22 win at Las Vegas — Dalton became the first QB this year to throw for 300 yards and three TDs. In two games under Dalton, the Panthers are in the top six in the league in scoring and total yards after ranking last in both categories while Young was behind center.
“There’s a lot of plays (from) last year and these two first games, for the most part, every snap hit my hands and I didn’t do enough with it at the end of the day. I take accountability for that,” Young said the week of the switch. “There’s plays, there’s stuff, there’s a long list of things that I wish I was better at. And I’m going to continue to work to grow and improve.”
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Young’s opportunities to grow now are limited to QB meetings, individual drills and his snaps running the scout-team offense against the first-team defense.
“The expectation is to know the game plan, be ready to play. He’s done that,” Canales said. “He’s supportive. He’s sharp. That role is to be an asset … a resource for the quarterback that’s playing.”
The Athletic reported several teams asked Carolina about Young’s availability the week he was benched but were told the Panthers weren’t looking to trade him. They would be selling low if they chose to: Young’s 2-16 record as a starter is the worst among the 28 quarterbacks drafted No. 1 in the Super Bowl era.
So while Dalton makes his third start Sunday at Soldier Field, Young will have a sideline view of Dalton, Williams and the other Bears players who came to Chicago in a trade that will leave lasting effects — good and bad — on both franchises for years to come.
The deal isn’t done bearing fruit for the Bears, either. Chicago still has one remaining pick from the Panthers to use: the second-rounder in 2025.
“Between the two clubs, there was a lot of back-and-forth there (in 2023) and they were willing to deal,” Eberflus said. “So it was a good point for us. And it just worked out.”
(Top photos of Caleb Williams and Bryce Young: Michael Reaves and Ian Maule / Getty Images)
