defiantgiant

I thought I'd start a thread for all the players that Chicago's brought in for pre-draft visits. Anybody know anything about these guys? Defense Matt Mayberry, LB, Indiana Damaso Munoz, LB, Rutgers Danny Batten, DE, South Dakota State Nate Collins, DT, Virginia Jeffrey Fitzgerald, DT, Kansas State George Johnson, DT, Rutgers Amari Spievey, CB, Iowa Akwasi Owusu-Ansah, CB/S, Indiana (Pa.) Robert Johnson, S, Utah Offense Freddie Barnes, WR, Bowling Green Naaman Roosevelt, WR, Buffalo Jeff Linkenbach, OT, Cincinnati Nic Richmond, OT, TCU Will Barker, OT, Virginia Levi Horn, OT, Montana J'Marcus Webb, OT, West Texas A&M Ramon Harewood, OG, Morehouse Nick Howell, OG, USC

Landing Marshall is huge for Miami if he can stay out of trouble. They were fielding a bunch of slot receivers and Ted Ginn before this, with nobody who could both stretch the field and catch a football. Giving Henne a genuine go-to receiver should help him out tremendously, especially a guy like Marshall, who has no problem making catches in heavy coverage. Henne can force the ball to Marshall a little bit and not get burnt for it, just like Cutler did in Denver. I totally agree about McDaniels...he's blown up a pretty high-octane offense and replaced it with Kyle Orton, Brady Quinn, and Jabar Gaffney. That's not to say that he didn't get good compensation: two firsts, two seconds, and a third is a hell of a lot, even for two young, talented starters. But if he doesn't land some real gems with those draft picks, he's going to get run out of town.

Thanks, but I think states the reasons better than I ever could. Seriously, it's hilarious.

Even if he doesn't, honestly. DBs have to respect him and Holmes, just based on how easily they can get open deep down the field. For all Edwards' catching problems, he still routinely torches corners if he's single-covered. With those two lining up outside, they're going to draw tons of coverage away from Cotchery and Keller, both of whom are pretty nasty in their own right.

I'm pretty sure that NFL teams can't ask for money as part of a trade. But your point still stands: if nothing else, the Skins are going to want a much higher draft pick now that they've paid him $21 mil. I doubt the Bears have the draft ammo, and even if they did they have too many other needs.

Double post.

No way. Ginn has some of the worst hands in football and he's scared to go over the middle. He caught less than half (38 of 78, or 48.7%) of the passes thrown to him this year, and he dropped 10 passes to go with his measly 38 catches. According to PFF, Ginn had the third-worst drop percentage in the NFL, behind only Mark Bradley and James Jones. He dropped more passes than Braylon Edwards, more than Roy Williams, more than anybody except Bradley and Jones. That's bad. I can't see his problems getting better on the Bears, either. Ginn's never been able to catch the football, even with the most accurate QB in NFL history throwing to him. You can't chalk his problems up to switching from Pennington to Henne, either - not with Davone Bess still catching everything in sight. How would Ginn do with Cutler throwing 100-mile-an-hour fastballs his way? I don't care what offensive system the Bears run, whether it's Martz's or anybody else's: receivers have to be able to catch, and Ginn can't catch. I can see him catching on with some team in need of a kick returner, but Chicago already has more of those than they know what to do with.

Glad to see that PFF came to the same conclusion that most of us did about Williams' move to LT. He really did play pretty well once he was on the left side. If he can keep it up this season, he'll be at least an above-average LT.

Rotoworld is reporting that the Steelers just shipped Santonio Holmes to the Jets for a 2010 fifth-rounder. It's the #151 pick overall. Holmes is a big character risk, and I'm not one of these people saying that the Bears desperately need to upgrade at receiver, but Angelo absolutely should have sent a 5th for him. Santonio and Hester would have been a nasty pair of deep-threats for Martz's deep passing game.

Yeah, physical play and blocking are the knocks on Olsen, not speed and hands by any stretch. He runs around a 4.5 in the 40 (which is excellent for a TE,) and he was in the top 5 among TEs in the league for fewest passes dropped.

Owusu-Ansah reminds me too much of Danieal Manning - elite athlete for his position, but scouts keep saying he has very very questionable instincts. I'd rather get a guy who's less of an athletic specimen but knows the position inside and out.

I'll take the Seahawks.

Yeah, I'm not worried about them telegraphing the move. If anything, it'll let teams in the top of the 2nd know who to call if they're trying to move down. Like you said, I'll believe it when I see it, but there are a lot of worse moves we could make than trading up for a starting-caliber free safety. We haven't had one since Mike Brown's Achilles problems started.

Yeah, and even if he's not great at it, he's been steadily improving as a blocker since he came in the league. His blocking skills were effectively zero when we drafted him; I remember an interview where he said that in his rookie year, Clark and the other TEs used to crack jokes about how bad a blocker he was. Then he talked about how he's been working on his footwork, hand placement, leverage...all the things you need when you don't have the body type to just bulldoze a guy. I think Des Clark is a great example for Olsen. Clark came into the league as a wide receiver, and he's still pretty small (sub-250 pounds) for a TE. But he's worked himself into a great blocker, and I think a lot of it is just really sound technique. If Olsen can do the same, he'll be a really complete TE.

Yeah, agreed. It just sucks when a good player gets cut loose over money. I didn't mind it when it was Berrian, because he was legitimately trying to get paid like a top-5 receiver. Brown's contract with the Saints is a lot smaller ($5.5 million/2 years) than what the Bears would have owed him, but it's not like he was trying to get paid like Mario Williams or something. I imagine that the Bears would have kept him or worked with him to restructure if they hadn't sunk so much money into Peppers already. Oh well. I can see why they couldn't come to a deal, I just wish it had worked out differently. It'd be a better d-line with him lining up across from Peppers.

Yeah, he's like Leftwich but not as slow. I see him as somewhere between Leftwich and Orton in terms of decision-making, but he's got more arm strength and better mobility than either. He's not elite, but he could definitely step in on an otherwise solid offense and run it.

I can totally see the concern about the depth at CB, but I think it'd be a luxury to take one this year unless it's in the 5th-7th. We've got two decent starters at the position (even if they're both injury risks,) and as of right now there's no quality starter at free safety, split end, and right tackle/left guard. Couldn't hurt to take a flyer on a late-round corner, though. Angelo hits on late-round DBs more often than most drafters. I'd be OK with taking a flyer on a developmental/upside corner (like AJ Jefferson) or a first-rounder who fell because of injury (like Walter Thurmond.)

I'm glad he landed on a good team - he was always a classy guy in Chicago, and I would have hated for him to get cut over money and then spend the rest of his career on a rebuilding team like the Bucs. Great pickup for New Orleans.

Update: Apparently when Lovie went to USF's pro day, he had breakfast with Nate Allen, their free safety. They've basically admitted that he was there to see whether Allen was good enough to be worth moving up for.

I mean that he's playing a lot of single-high, and like twenty yards deep. The Bears defense is pretty frequently in a 2-deep shell, even when they're not playing Tampa-2, and you don't see a lot of safeties in the NFL playing as deep as he is in a bunch of those clips.

Profootballfocus just did a study tabulating how many "catchable" passes were dropped by each receiver and TE last season: they watched each pass themselves and classified a pass as "catchable" if the receiver could get his hands on it and you would "reasonably expect it to be caught" - so passes deflected, slips, and passes thrown where the receiver could only get a fingertip on the ball wouldn't count. It's a narrow category, but it gives you an idea, for each guy, of how many passes he dropped that he absolutely should have caught. It looks like they only discuss the best and worst guys in the league, so the Bears' wide receivers are all missing in action in the study. They must all be somewhere in the middle. Some formers Bears don't look so good, though: Mark Bradley dropped fully 25% of the passes that hit him in the hands, making him the dropsiest receiver in the league. Bobby Wade and Justin Gage weren't far behind. The tight ends part of the study features one guy we've been talking a lot about, though: Greg Olsen dropped only TWO of the 61 catchable passes thrown to him - that's a 3.28% drop percentage, good for fourth-best in the league among TEs. He was more reliable, by this metric, than Jason Witten, Dallas Clark, Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, Chris Cooley, Jeremy Shockey...basically all the best receiving TEs in the league. He may not have made the plays that those guys did, but he wasn't dropping the football. I've definitely been frustrated with Olsen in the past (as I think a lot of us have) for the catches he hasn't made, but whatever the problem is, it ain't his hands. Now if they could just do a study on fighting-the-DB-for-the-ball percentage, maybe we'd have a better idea about why Olsen hasn't lived up to his potential yet.

Or the new left guard, for that matter. But I see nfo's point - either Manumaleuna's going to be a waste of money, or the quoted insider is making a little too much of how risky and demanding Martz's protection scheme is. Given how Angelo always seems to make sure that his guys get their playing time, I'd tend to believe that we'll be seeing plenty of Manumaleuna helping out in protection. Which is a good thing, since right tackle isn't likely to be the strongest spot on our roster.

No argument here. He's done. I think Campbell's gotten a raw deal. He's a very talented guy, and for a QB with a big arm, he's pretty careful with the football: there was that stretch of games from the end of 2007 through part of 2008 where Campbell threw 271 consecutive passes without being intercepted. I don't remember where that is in the NFL record books, but it's up there. Even with the Skins changing offense almost every year and their o-line playing like crap for the past couple of seasons, Campbell's still done a pretty respectable job - well over 60% completions, around 3400 yards a season, pretty good TD-INT ratio. For teams that want a QB to manage the game and occasionally take a shot deep, Campbell would be a nice pickup. He's got some flaws, sure: his release and decision-making could both be a lot quicker. But I think he'd be a good pickup for a team that has the line to protect him and doesn't need their quarterback to be Peyton Manning. Before the Favre thing, I used to be worried that Minnesota would pick him up: he could do really well in their offense, though obviously not as well as Favre has.

I think the upshot is that Martz doesn't use that TE very often. He runs a lot of 4-wide single-back sets, or 3-wide sets with a halfback and an H-back. I'm sure Manumaleuna is going to help one of the tackles in pass-protection when he's on the field, but I don't know how often that'll be.

Oh yeah, it'd be a total luxury pick, that's why I started with the caveat that we'd have to be able to address one of our big needs with a free agent signing. Here's how I see the positional needs: 1) FS - Huge need: nobody on the roster even has the potential to be good. 2) RT - Big need. Unlike safety, though, there are some young guys with potential on the roster (Omiyale, Marten) and if one of them steps up, the position isn't really a need. 3) DT - Could definitely be a need. Harrison looks like a bust so far, which only leaves Tommie, Adams, Gilbert, and Toeaina. Tommie's inconsistent, Toeaina's purely a depth guy, and Gilbert is a total question mark, so we've got all of one bona fide starter on the interior D-line: Adams. We could use a pass-rusher to rotate with Tommie and a legit nose tackle to develop behind Adams. 4) WR - Like with RT, a need unless one of our young talented guys steps up. Probably more likely that a receiver steps up than one of our tackles, though. 5) DE - Maybe could use an upgrade after Brown's departure, but I think this would be a luxury pick. Idonije should be adequate as a base end, Peppers is Peppers, and Anderson and Melton can contribute as situational rushers.