What did the Carolina Panthers turn down for the No. 8 pick?
By Dean Jones
What did the Bears offer the Carolina Panthers?
One team that made no secret of their intentions to make a big splash in the first round was the Chicago Bears. They let Mitchell Trubisky go in free agency – who’ll be classed as one of the biggest draft busts in history – and even though they signed Andy Dalton a longer-term option was clearly high on their list of priorities.
According to Joe Banner from The 33rd Team, Chicago offered the Carolina Panthers a first-round pick next year, a fourth-round selection, a fifth-rounder, and an exchange of firsts in 2020 to surge from No. 20 right up to No. 8 for Justin Fields.
This was a solid offer and one the Panthers probably thought long and hard about if Banner’s report is accurate. However, they were enormously excited about selecting Jaycee Horn and felt that bringing a potential shutdown cornerback on board was more beneficial than acquiring more picks and leaving things up to fate later on in the first round.
Scott Fitterer was extremely active on Days 2 and 3 getting more in the way of draft capital during an unprecedented period of trade activity that eventually saw the Panthers pick 11 times and also get a 2022 fourth-rounder from the Houston Texans in the process.
Draft management such as this has been missing from the organization in recent seasons. Whether they made the right decision not to accept this reported offer or not, only time will tell.