If Martavis Bryant is on the market, as suggested, the Chicago Bears should be making the call
After a Pittsburgh Steeler win, rumors swirled that Martavis Bryant, disgruntled by 58 yards in the past two weeks combined is requesting a trade. The Steelers have a rookie, JuJu Smith-Schuster thriving on the outside, and have Eli Rogers in the slot if they do move on from Bryant. It gives this rumor legs. If Bryant is on the market, the Bears are a perfect team to give it a shot with him.
Bryant does not have good stats this season, but that is on Ben Roethlisberger, not Bryant. Bryant has consistently been open deep, but Roethlisberger, who is having the worst deep passing season of his career is missing the 26-year old potential superstar.
He did this first hand to the Bears, but Roethlisberger missed the wide open Bryant on an opening play that could have changed the outcome of that game.
This is not a rare occurrence. It can be found in almost every game. Bryant is consistently getting open deep.
Bryant has risk, there is no doubt about it. However, for the rest of 2017, and for all of 2018, he is under a rookie scale contract for a fourth-round draft pick. You can insert him into the lineup and have at least 25 games to decide if he can establish a longer-term connection with Mitchell Trubisky. This is a guy who has 15 career touchdowns in 10 career starts. The upside of a potential spark is limitless and the risk from two years with Bryant is just as much as four years with any prospect in this draft.
There are questions about whether or not he can get suspended again, as he has already missed one full season. However, if you have followed his Instagram or a Sports Illustrated feature on him, he does appear to be a changed man who took being pushed to the edge to realize what he is here for. He is in the best shape of his life and mentioned he is working out for the first time in his life, which is incredible when you think about his success.
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The Bears are the most desperate team in the NFL for anybody at all to stretch the field. Taking a shot on a rookie scale player with the upside of 1,000 yards and ten touchdowns seems like a no-brainer. He can open up the run game and the rest of the field for underneath passing. This defense is talented, and seeing what kind of impact Bryant could have on the offense would be worth the risk.