Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:
What’s up with these Jordan Howard trade rumors again? He deleted every picture off of his Instagram relating to the Bears, how serious might this situation be? — @zberg034
You might be better off asking the folks who produced the rumors to get a better answer on the speculation surrounding his future. There were a ton of inquiries about Howard on Wednesday and to my knowledge, there’s nothing going on with Howard’s roster status. I don’t follow Howard on the Instagram machine so I can’t speak specifically to what was there before. You learn to never say never and not be surprised by a whole lot, but right now I don’t believe anything is happening with the running back.
I also am not an Instagram guy as I feel like I’m forced to give away enough of my information already. But having said that, this does sound like a “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” situation.
Let’s be honest. Howard has a tough time holding on to passes and he’s going to be expected to be able to catch them in the offense under new head coach Matt Nagy. I’ve heard it said that with Tarik Cohen and Benny Cunningham on the roster that the position is “well rounded” with each back having a role. But I don’t buy that. You can’t limit the play call nor can you provide potential tips to the defense based upon what back is lined up.
Cohen is going to have to become better at catching the ball and I would not too shocked to see the Bears take a running back in the draft if the right one fell their way. At that point, you’d look for them to trade Howard. In fact, it wouldn’t be too surprising if Howard had already gotten word about a deal that the Bears had worked out ahead of the draft, hence the deleted pictures.
Personally, I hope this doesn’t happen. First I think the pass catching weakness is overblown and that it’s entirely possible that some good coaching could make Howard at least adequate out of the backfield. Second, as much as I value pass catching out of the backfield, its hard to find a good, powerful back with the vision that Howard has. They don’t seem to me to just fall out of trees.
But the Bears may have something else in mind.