3 Bears players who won’t be back for the 2023 season

The Chicago Bears are building for the future and can spend big in the 2023 offseason, but that means these players are almost surely gone next season.

There were never the highest of hopes for the Chicago Bears in the 2022 season. And truthfully, their record reflects about what we expected from this team as they head into Week 16 with only three wins on the year. Yet, it’s actually difficult to not feel positive about the franchise moving forward, especially with the way that Justin Fields has emerged as a bonafide playmaker and seemingly the franchise cornerstone they’d hoped he’d be in the Windy City.

Now the Bears go into the 2023 offseason with a boatload of cap space and high-end draft capital to build a roster that can win around Fields and, potentially, do so quickly. But while it might seem harsh, that also means that some players currently on the roster won’t be around for the future.

In particular, these three Chicago Bears players are almost surely not going to be along for the ride in the 2023 season.

Chicago Bears: 3 players who won’t be back in the 2023 season

Nathan Peterman isn’t an adequate backup for the Bears behind Justin Fields

The most we’ve heard from Nathan Peterman in the 2022 season with Chicago is when he was the backup to Trevor Siemian while Justin Fields was out due to injury. But that really speaks to why the veteran quarterback who is set to be a free agent after the end of the year has no business being brought back.

Yes, there is always a concern that Fields’ playmaking and rushing ability are going to make the young star susceptible to more hits and, as such, more injuries. That makes the backup quarterback spot incredibly important for the Bears. But it’s hard to look at the combo of Siemian and Peterman and think that’s a viable way to go about it.

Siemian is not yet going to be a free agent, but it would behoove the franchise a great deal to let Peterman walk without a second thought and then look to essentially move Siemian into that emergency QB3 role that Peterman occupied and then find an upgrade either with one of their bevy of draft picks or by way of free agency who is a more capable outright backup to Fields.

This team is going to go as far as Fields takes them in the future, without a doubt. But it makes the most sense to find ways to survive if he misses any time and having Siemian as QB2 and then Peterman behind him isn’t the way to accomplish that, so letting the latter walk in free agency seems wholly logical.