AZ54

If the first sentence is true then the second leads to what? Problem is who are we going to pay less money, or even the same, and get better production?

No white Nick and now no black Nick. That was fast. I liked him but the reality is try hard guys like him are easy to find and he really struggled with increased snaps. At times he was getting moved 5 yards off the LOS. Don't need that for $5mil/yr.

Do we still have Jimmy Graham on the roster? I need to know when to stop drinking.

I don't want either at that price. If we give up any pick at all then the seller must be buying back some of the contract to minimize our cap space. How much $ they eat determines the pick we give up. It's the only way we can do this because we don't have a ton of picks and we don't have a ton of cap space. Neither of these guys is a legit starter but could win some games behind a good defense so they fit the bill.

What did the Raiders pay? Why did Mariota go there? Because he thinks Gruden is a QB guru? The money will tell the story but if it's low it does not mean the Raiders are out of the FA QB market. They might decide to go with someone like Bridgewater and move on from Carr.

All a good offense has to do is drag him beyond the hash marks and he's out of his comfort zone and giving up lots of YAC.

Texan fans have to be depressed to see a Hall of Fame talent let go. I just read the 49ers let go of their best Dlineman in Buckner. Gave up Buckner and got a 1st Rd pick in exchange. Buckner was the engine that made that Dline go, not Bosa, and they will find that out soon enough.

This might be Pace's worst move... evah. I agree it's desperation to fix the TE spot. The salary is one thing but the guaranteed money bothers me. If this were a deal where we could bring him into camp and let him compete and if he's not worth $8mil let him go I could live with it. The only way this makes sense is if Burton is gone because then we must have someone with experience to fill that U TE role. A rookie will never fill that slot in year 1. We can't pay $14mil to two broken down TEs. I assume Burton's rehab is not going well and the team has concerns he'll never return to form. I expect Burton to get cut in the near future, or maybe as I think Adam has been saying if cut after Jun 1st we take minimal cap hit this year. Now draft Claypool to groom for the role behind Graham for a season. I have no idea if Graham is a good locker room guy who helps coach the younger players but that's a must have on this team. I have to think it was part of Pace's decision.

Saving money for Watson's deal. He's going to learn quickly what Hopkins meant for him.

NOt sure I'm buying the Bridgewater news either. Might be an agent spouting off to generate some action around the league. With Teddy we'd have to build a strong running game behind a good Oline because he can't run. I still think we wait out the QB market a bit and take what's left in Rd 2 of FA.

More or less the same deal Trevathan got. Tells me the Bears valued Danny more than Kwit and might have been happy to keep Kwit if they could save some money. They couldn't so they took the better player.

FWIW Spotrac has Trubisky's value listed at $27.8mil/yr.

Spotrac says we have $21mil. Overthecap says $8mil but they tend to be slower with updates. Neither site is accurate as OTC shows Kyle Long still on the books, Spotrac has Eddie Jackson for $1mil/yr. Hopefully tomorrow we'll figure it out but FA begins in earnest at noon.

I like your plan of attack for the draft.

Insane for a guy who only threw what 15 and then 14 passes in back to back playoff wins.

It was great for us that we had two good options in front of us. That doesn't happen too often. Best of luck to Kwit, he will end up somewhere and hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of his coverage issues if we see him again.

Do you really think he'll be gone by either of our 2nd Rd picks? I doubt it especially with all the talent in this years draft. In this draft we have two athletic talents at safety including Jeremy Chinn, who is 6'3" and 221lbs. Both these players are similar but the lack of competition for Dugger has to be a concern for his transition to the NFL. I believe both will end up having good careers and may end up as starters down the road but that won't happen in 2020. Dugger adds return ability too but still IMO there are better football players in Rd 2 than either of these safeties. These are the type of players we should look at if we trade back.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001106246/article/nfl-player-vote-ratifies-new-cba-through-2030-season It's going to increase the salary cap but we also add 2 players to the roster....55 now which I think is good. I don't know if they will increase the game day roster because that's something else I'd like to see since we are moving to a 17 game schedule. Anything we can do to reduce snap count for players during a long season is a good thing IMO. Plus it would make it easier to get a backup OG some game time snaps when a game is in control in the 4th quarter. With such a limited active roster teams usually only have two backup Oline active on game day. Cap goes up to $198mil. The minimum salaries go up a lot and I think that's a good too along with better benefits for retired players. Now we have football setup for the next 11 years. With this stability the next big thing we'll likely see is figuring out how/where to have an international team. Since it's the offseason....that travel will get a lot easier in about 5 years and it won't cost much more than today's sub-sonic airline tickets. https://boomsupersonic.com/overture

Any credibility for that site went out the window when I saw the next article below this one saying Chicago is the ideal place for washed-up TE JImmy Graham.

That 2nd Rd pick won't happen. This does allow Pace to lock him down and hopefully offer him a short term deal 2-3yr range with a little more guaranteed money (maybe $6mil) but still letting him hit FA when he's young enough to hit a bigger contract if he plays well. The $21mil was more than I expected too but after hearing how much cap space was going up with the new CBA deal all salaries are going to go up. $200mil cap means teams can spend an average of $3.7mil per player. Is Trevathan worth 2x an average player? I'd say so for now. That might change in the last year of the deal. Is this deal a sign players and teams are expecting the CBA to pass? In this case I think it's in both player and team's interest to get a deal done early so not likely. ARob hasn't even begun to negotiate as his agent waits on the new CBA decision.

Very interesting. I assume Kwit is gone and we re-sign KPL as the primary backup. I also hope this is a team friendly deal in the sense the last year of the deal is probably a team option meaning little cap hit if we cut him. https://bearswire.usatoday.com/2020/03/12/bears-sign-danny-trevathan-to-three-year-extension/

I like Vonn Bell or Karl Joseph. Either fits what we need. Bell might not be the most athletic safety but he has good leadership on the field. I think he'd be a good fit in our locker room.

I agree on our FAs except he might let Kwit test the market with intent to match

I disagree because while early on there is a feeding frenzy for the top FAs the teams that are focused on getting one or even two of them typically has to focus a lot of energy negotiating those deals. If you remove yourself from the top tier noise then you can quickly and quietly focus on the 2nd tier FAs. The only issue with that is then you are setting the market for those FAs instead of letting prices settle down a bit. Still if that's your best shot and you really want a mid-level guy like Halapoulicaati Vaitai OT (had to copy/paste that) then just go get him and don't wait for the competition to show up later. He still makes our team better but that's not hard to do when Leno was the starting LT last year. That contract for Vaitai is likely going to be higher than the proposed 3/$24 deal simply because FAs usually earn more than we expect, or maybe he gets a surprising amount of guaranteed money on it. That will be true with the new CBA deal likely getting approved before FA. I say likely because as Sam Acho explained it, about 68% of the players will get 20% pay raises. The elite 10-15% players who might make hte news with their comments they just don't have as much say in the situation. Those in the middle will likely depend on where they are at in their career. If you are close the end of your career (i.e. Trevathan) but likely have enough to get one more decent contract do you want to go into this season with labor uncertainty to the point teams will prefer 1yr deal for you? Do you want to risk a lockout next season and give up millions? For NFL players it's vastly different than how the rest of us view our career. If I were a bottom-50%-of-the-roster player nothing Aaron Rodgers complains about regarding money matters to me if I know I a yes vote gets me a 20% raise the next 1-3 years. Also, more games equals more opportunity for the bottom of the roster players, which oculd lead to a decent deal with some guaranteed money. We'll have more playoff teams as well and that too is another paycheck. Just looking at the Bears' roster I see just 14 players earning more than $2mil. Obviously we'll add a few more soon but still we may lose one or two as well.

With this draft I'm not interested in spending much on a FA plus nobody is really appealing. Travis Austin is too old and never had decent long speed, his game relied on his short area quickness. Perriman never could run routes well. Paul Richardson has had a lot of injuries lately making him a big risk. He's available now since he was released and still teams aren't knocking down the door to sign him. I'm sure part of that has to do with the deep WR class. Marcus Johnson...why would the Colts with $86mil of cap space let even a moderately good WR leave when they need to entice a good FA QB to join their roster? His best year includes 17 receptions.