Bears' Jared Allen trade a rare case of win-win-win

The exact details of every conversation will remain private, as they should. But the chain of events that led to Jared Allen being traded from the Bears to the Carolina Panthers, which began with Allen’s frank self-assessment, produced a result that benefited all parties involved. Usually a "good" deal is one where everyone leaves the table a teeny bit grumpy, feeling they could've done a little better. Not this one.

The Allen trade was less a case of the Bears dumping a veteran player as part of some rebuilding process of reshaping their roster than the organization doing the right thing for the player, itself and even another NFC team. (The Bears weren't being stupid, though; they…