DJ Moore didn’t speak when the season ended. He didn’t explain the route. He didn’t defend himself. And as the silence stretched, the story around him grew louder than the play itself.
The interception. The overtime loss. The frozen frame of a route dissected endlessly on social media. For weeks, fans filled the vacuum with their own conclusions — some calling for a trade, others going further, questioning whether Moore should even be part of Chicago’s future.
At the Super Bowl, Moore finally broke that silence.
Caught up by Jarrett Payton in a brief WGN interview, Moore didn’t sound defensive. He didn’t sound frustrated. If anything, he sounded amused. When asked about the idea that he could be leaving Chicago, Moore laughed it off.
“I can’t let the fans get too high or too low on my play,” he said. “They’d be mad because they be bettin’. That’d be the only reason.”
It was classic Moore — disarming, understated, and quietly revealing.
For all the noise, Moore made one thing clear: leaving Chicago was never on his mind.
“Yeah, I want to be in Chicago,” he said. “I’m really not looking at it like I’m not going to be in Chicago. That never really crossed my mind.”
That honesty stands in contrast to how the situation was framed online. Moore wasn’t made available to the media after the season, partly because of the controversial play in the divisional playoff loss to the Rams. In his absence, the narrative hardened.
Fans slowed the tape, questioned effort, and reduced a complex moment to a single accusation: he didn’t run hard enough.
Moore addressed that, too.
“I always got that it don’t look like I’m running,” he said. “Ever since I was little.”
It wasn’t a deflection. It was an explanation — one rooted in how he’s always moved. Moore even admitted he once tried to change his running style to satisfy critics.
“It didn’t work,” he said. “So I just let it be.”
That calm acceptance is part of why Moore has survived — and thrived — in a league that rarely grants patience. It’s also why the trade talk feels disconnected from reality.
Moore isn’t a free agent. He carries the Bears’ largest cap hit next season at $28.5 million. Cutting him before June 1 would be financially impossible.
Trading him before June 1 would actually reduce Chicago’s cap flexibility. Only a post–June 1 trade makes any sense on paper — and even that would require a willing partner and a clear upgrade in return.
In other words, the math doesn’t match the outrage.
More importantly, the football doesn’t either.
Moore remains Chicago’s most proven receiver. He’s been a stabilizing presence for Caleb Williams. And fans calling for his departure seem to forget one inconvenient detail: Moore helped the Bears beat Green Bay twice in one month — something the franchise hadn’t done since 2007.
That alone buys a lot of grace in Chicago.
Moore understands the criticism comes with the job. He doesn’t resent it. He doesn’t fight it. He absorbs it — then moves on.
“I know where you’re getting that,” he said of the fan backlash. “But it is what it is. That’s what we signed up for.”
There was no bitterness in his voice. Just acceptance.
The route will be debated. The interception will be replayed. That won’t change. But Moore’s stance is clear: he isn’t running from Chicago — even if, to some, it never looks like he’s running hard enough in the first place.
And sometimes, that quiet confidence says more than any explanation ever could.
Leave a Reply