adam

Just curious, you would you rather have Pick #25 with a 5th year option, or a 2nd (#40) and a 3rd (#72) for 4 years? I feel like in order to get true impact players, most of the time they are first rounders, and it feels like the Bears need more of those type of players to upgrade existing positions where there are average players. On the flip side, how big of a difference is it from #25 to #40?

Yeah that was a good thing, but I feel like he will end up there eventually as a former player. Once we get thru Year 2 with the same core, I will feel pretty confident regardless of which coaches and players leave. Right now the team is still ascending, so continuity is very important. It will be interesting to see if his presence has an impact on the free agent signings like Wright and CJGJ?

Teams have exclusive rights until the start of the new league year. So basically the Bears would have exclusive rights to their FAs thru March 10th, then the legal tampering period opens, so it becomes fair game.

No problemo, I will try to do some deep dives going into next season.

With our current defense, we blow both of these AFC teams out by at least 20 pts. This is some of the worst football I have seen in a long time, and it is a Conference Championship. Obviously, DEN didn't have Nix, but Payton not taking points early was the difference. The Pats are going to win with Maye having 86 yards passing. They have now had one of the top 10 easiest schedules in NFL history, then got LAC, HOU, and DEN w/ a backup QB. Wild really.

Watching the NE vs DEN game, holy hell those teams look like crap. Maye has 55 yards passing thru 3 quarters and 3 sacks. Whoever wins the NFC will crush either of these teams. So many what ifs for the Bears. They had a legit shot if they beat LA.

Next up is the East-West Shrine and Senior Bowls. Just over 6 weeks until Free Agency opens and under 3 months until the draft. January 27th - East-West Shrine Bowl January 31st - Senior Bowl February 17th-March 3rd - Franchise Tag Window February 23rd-March 2nd - NFL Combine March 9th-11th - Legal Tampering Period March 11th - Free Agency Officially Opens April 20th - Clubs with returning head coaches can begin offseason workout programs April 23rd-25th - NFL Draft May 1st - Designate 5th-year options from 2023 Draft (Wright) May 1st or 8th - Rookie Minicamp

Detroit hires Petzing as their OC and GB hires Gannon as their DC. ARZ's defense was one of the worst in the NFL over the last 3 years finishing 29th, 15th, and 31st in pts while the offense was not much better finishing 23rd, 12th, and 24th. Considering GB is going from Hafley to Gannon; that is a huge downgrade in coaching. Gannon benefitted from a stacked roster in PHI which he will not have in GB, nor did he have in ARZ. DET let go their OC that had the 4th highest scoring offense for one that had the 23rd. Are they going to have Petzing use their current offensive scheme or will they change to his? Either way that is a downgrade. Now the last domino is hopefully Flores. MIN did extend him as their DC, but there are still HC vacancies left. I don't know if he announced that he would not take any of those jobs but BUF, LVR, ARZ, and CLE are still open.

Outside of the division, the Bears top QBs they will face will be: Allen, Maye, and Lawrence with 2 of those games at home. I kinda like that. Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Mayfield Philadelphia Eagles - Hurts Jacksonville Jaguars - Lawrence New York Jets - Rookie? New England Patriots - Maye New Orleans Saints - Shough Buffalo Bills - Allen Miami Dolphins - Tua? Atlanta Falcons - Penix/Cousins? Carolina Panthers - Young Seattle Seahawks - Darnold

Looking at this again with some of the playoffs complete, the biggest challenges will be SEA and NE, and BUF in BUF. JAX in CHI will be a solid matchup. If you consider SEA, NE, JAX, BUF, and PHI as top 10 teams, that is 5 games against top 10 teams, 6 divisional games (always tough), 4 meh teams, and 2 bad teams. So 5, 6, 6, is a pretty even distribution. I just hope they get a later bye.

Anything is possible. DJ would have to agree to it. I agree on the WR part for KC, especially considering Kelce's retirement. Kmet an option? Moore is the perfect WR for a bad team with a young QB, like TEN or LVR.

I am sure Saleh will bring in McDaniel as his OC, forming SF-Central. Makes too much sense. I bet that is what landed him the job over Nagy. Nagy has struggled to bring in other coaches. Fangio was already on the staff when Nagy took over, he then hired Pagano, then Desai. In Nagy's coaching tenure, the team never had the same OC/DC combo in back-to-back years: Helfrich/Fangio Helfrich/Pagano Lazor/Pagano Lazor/Desai

Not if they trade for Moore, they take on his cap hit, which would be $16.5M for them, which means they would swap Moore and Jones and be worse off than they are now. A cut or trade accelerates cap hits, while restructures lessens them pushing money into the future like you said. KC is only in a bind for 2026, so they can safely move $20-30M to 2027 with limited impact. They have to free up $62M or $70M in effective cap, that is almost 25% of the total cap. They can add also void years to help offset the spread of the bonuses. So Jones has a $44.8M cap hit this year with $35M in guarantees. Since the money is guaranteeed, they will have to pay it one way or another. So they can convert it all to a bonus which gets spread out over the remainder of his deal, 3 years. That would reduce his 2026 cap hit to around $30M (saving $15M). However, if they need even more relief than that, they can add a year or two in void years to thin out that bonus money over 5 years instead of 3, which would give him a cap hit of $26M for 2026, saving about $19M.

KC's cap is screwed. I don't think they can trade Jones because him and Mahomes are basically the only two players that you can get cap relief from with a restructure. If they trade him, they immediately get a $30M dead money cap hit, which doesn't really help their situation. I have seen Simmons mentioned from TEN, but TEN has the most cap space, so moving him doesn't make much sense if it is strictly for cap purposes. There are several teams that fit the criteria who are in the need of cap relief and trading a player would provide that: Vikings, Cowboys, and Dolphins

Don't really want to talk what-ifs or beat a dead horse, but this was 100% on DJ. He ran his route about 10 yards too vertical. If he runs the right route, it hit him in the hands at the 25 with no defender within 5 yards of him. This guy breaks it down perfectly. What it seems like to me is because DJ didn't get the ball on previous times this play was called, that he didn't think it was coming to him so he was just jogging it out.