It’s not all that often that a team general manager speaks openly about regrets just a few hours after pulling off a blockbuster trade that helps his team, but that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday when Chicago Bears General Manager Ryan Poles spoke to the media after the team traded star linebacker Roquan Smith to the Baltimore Ravens.
While Poles is surely glad that the team was able to get something in return for the veteran linebacker, he revealed that he wasn’t particularly happy that the team had to trade him away, saying that he was “bummed” and thought that he the Bears were going to have Smith on the roster for “a long time.”
“There’s a part of me that’s bummed because this was a guy that I thought was going to be here for a long time,” Poles said, according to Pro Football Talk. “I felt like we put a lot of effort forward to get that done. We came up short, we couldn’t find common ground, and that’s just a part of this business, which I think we all understand.”
Smith’s trade came after the two sides couldn’t agree to a new contract during the offseason, resulting in Smith requesting a trade back in August. Once negotiations stalled, Smith said “the new front office regime doesn’t value me here” and said that the team “refused to negotiate in good faith.” Smith was in the final year of his contract with the team and sat out the entire preseason as he sought either a trade or a new contract.
Not everything works out exactly how you want it to.
