Some trades in the NFL take a while to develop.
Others have pretty clear winners right away.
In the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers' November 2022 trade of Chase Claypool to the Chicago Bears for a 2023 second-round pick, it didn't take too long.
The Steelers would use that second-rounder on cornerback Joey Porter Jr.
In a new retrospective looking back at the deal on Thursday, ESPN's Bill Barnwell calls it a "huge Steelers victory."
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Claypool caught 18 passes with the Bears.
"It went worse than anybody could have expected," Barnwell writes. "Claypool looked disinterested during his time with the Bears and caught a total of 18 passes before the organization gave up on him and shipped the mercurial wideout to the Dolphins for a swap of Day 3 picks."
The trade hadn't even seemed particularly good at the time, but it aged terribly for the Bears.
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"This wasn't Claypool's fault, but the Bears didn't win a single game in 2022 after the trade and ended up sending the top pick in the second round to the Steelers," Barnwell writes. "Pittsburgh used it on Porter, who was a revelation as a rookie cornerback before taking a bit of a step backward last season. This was a disaster, albeit one overshadowed by the success of the trade down with Carolina."
This may not be a franchise changer, but it certainly didn't help Chicago's cause of digging itself out of a general malaise in recent years.
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