So a distracted Vasher stopped signing autographs after practice, cut short an interview and rushed into the locker room with hopes of catching close pal Chris Harris before Harris left campus to join his new team, the Carolina Panthers.

"Wow, it's tough," Vasher said, shaking his head. "We didn't even get a chance to say good-bye."

He and other Bears teammates would get a brief opportunity to do so later but the abrupt nature of Harris' departure bothered many of his buddies.

During the middle of the afternoon practice, Lovie Smith summoned Harris over to inform him the Bears had traded the third -year safety to the Panthers for a second-day draft pick.

Almost immediately, a golf cart zipped Harris off the field and he was gone.

Figuratively and literally, the Bears were moving on from their Super Bowl season.

Unloading a popular starter off that 2006 NFC Championship defense served as the latest reminder that their quest to repeat will be no sentimental journey.

"We saw (Harris) go in on the cart, but we thought he was going in for some treatment or to go to the restroom (and) then the word sort of filtered down to us," safety Mike Brown said. "It's a bummer, man. I'm kind of sad. He was a good dude."

An informal Harris poll of teammates would find Bears players against the deal. But nobody should feel too badly for him.

Harris goes from being a forgotten backup two injuries away from the field to a likely starter for a safety-depleted Carolina team that could contend for the NFC South Division title. He also has family ties in North Carolina that will ease his transition.

It says a lot about Harris' personality that so many members of the secondary spoke out on his behalf and tiptoed on the line between candor and criticism when discussing the motives of the Bears front office.

As compelling as some of the comments were, especially Charles Tillman's, too many Bears veterans understand the realities of the league for the trade of a backup safety to disrupt team chemistry.

"I just work here," an emotional Tillman said. "It came from left field. It's the people upstairs' decision and we have no say-so in that. I'm going to miss Chris Harris. He was a (darn) good football player, a good teammate, a fine young man."

In the meeting room, Harris was the kind of guy funny enough to leave them laughing as recently as Wednesday night and savvy enough to correct coaches at the blackboard. In the community, he was socially conscious enough to have made off-season trips to Iraq two summers in a row to support U.S. troops.

But on the field, Harris became expendable once the Bears saw enough out of their new players at the position to discard him.

Yes, Jerry Angelo gambled by trading a veteran at a position where Brown's health makes safety depth an annual concern. But the continued development of Danieal Manning, an athlete good enough to play any position in the secondary, assuaged many of those concerns.

Moving Harris suggests starting strong safety Adam Archuleta proved to the Bears in one week that reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated. No way the Bears would feel comfortable enough getting rid of a safety who had started 20 games in the past two seasons if they had the slightest reservations about Archuleta.

The move also reinforces the odd faith the team continues to show in Brandon McGowan, who will be elevated to Archuleta's backup with Harris gone. Foot and leg injuries have limited McGowan to nine games in two seasons but the Bears like his potential enough to open a spot for him.

Though injury-prone players often fall out of favor with NFL coaching staffs, McGowan had been getting an increasingly longer look with the No. 2 defense this week as trade talks heated up.

"I don't think it has anything to do with me," McGowan said. "It's just a business."

Drafting strong safety Kevin Payne last April, a college teammate of Harris' out Louisiana-Monroe, also indicated the organization's desire for an upgrade at the position.

"It's just the depth," Smith said when asked what made Harris expendable. "You can't keep six safeties."

Teams as draft-driven as the Bears can't keep trading away draft picks either without risking long-term stability, another factor in the deal. Acquiring veterans such as Archuleta and Darwin Walker for second-day draft choices represents a refreshing win-now mentality but minor deals like Harris' reminds everybody the future matters too.

And if Angelo finds the veteran running back he has been looking for since training camp started, the Panthers just gave him a bargaining chip to offer.

Simply, the Bears dealt from a position of strength to fill a need: draft choices. The only people who didn't sense the inevitability of a move at the overstocked position seemed to be the ones who play it.

"I really didn't think anything would happen," Brown said. "I thought you'd want to keep as much depth as possible and keep as many good football players on the team as you can. ... I guess you just come to work every day and hope you still have a job. Chris is going to be fine."