adam

the grades were ridiculous, 8 teams had C+ or lower, with a bunch of F's. It made no sense.

The offense will be better this year, I am assuming at least 3+ pts per game more, if not higher. At worst, I see the defense being about the same as last year, less takeaways, but fewer yards allowed, which will equate to similar pts allowed results. There seems to be a theme that the defense got considerably worse, and that is just not true. Brisker was serviceable, no different than Woods. Thieneman doesn't have the vet savvy as Byard but he will close the gaps a lot faster cutting down on those little extra yards that add up. Bush is a massive upgrade over Edmunds who never lived up to his physical stature. van den Berg is more disruptive than Dexter and will also help cut down on those hidden yards. Gordon barely played last year and when he did, he was solid but not great. McCloud played more and was terrible. Lewis may not be Gordon, but he is better than McCloud. Jarrett played hurt all year long, he is healthy and will be better. Sweat and Edwards are always solid, Jackson has played great, so the only real question mark is DE2 with Booker/Odeyingbo. If either are just league average, the defense will be fine imo. PFF Grades from last year: Byard 74.2 > Thieneman 65.5 (slight downgrade) Edmunds 66.5 > Bush 87.6 (huge upgrade) Wright 65.1 > Johnson 76.2 (upgrade) Brisker 60.5 > Woods 65.5 (wash) Dexter 57.6 > van den Berg 74.9 (Preseason) Gordon 59.2 > Lewis 57.4 (wash from Gordon last year). McCloud had a 49.9 grade. (upgrade from McCloud) Jarrett hurt > Jarrett healthy (slight upgrade)

btw, Bears -2.5 is a great bet.

Damn, your team did pretty good, Bijan, London, WIlson, Bowers, Tet, and Loveland is going to win you a lot of games.

Very true, with Raymond, Thomas, and Walker plus Loveland, Kmet, and Roush, there are a lot of mouths to feed. Raymond was buried on the depth chart, but when given the chance, he answered the bell. 80% Catch Rate and +0.54 EPA/Target last year would've been the best on the Bears, right ahead of Burden 78.3% and +0.46 EPA/T. Loveland at 70.7% and +0.55 EPA/T. Compare that to Odunze at 48.9% and +0.15 EPA/T. Moore had a slightly better Catch Rate than Odunze, but the lowest EPA/T out of the starting group 58.8% and +0.10. OZ was 60% and a terrible -0.12 EPA/T. So if Moore's and OZ's targets go to Burden, Loveland, and Raymond, the efficiency of the offense is going to go thru the roof. Not including Thomas or Roush.

Now the question is Odunze.

The regular season is upon us with games starting on Wednesday. So we get a few games before the Bears play. Hoping for good news later in the week on the injury front. The Bears need to handle business this weekend. CAR has no business being in this game. Last year they failed to score 20 pts in 10 out of 17 games. 6 out of 8 wins were by 3 pts, and 6 of 9 losses were by 10 or more. They were either getting beat bad or barely winning. That is a recipe for disaster. If the Division wasn't so bad, they would've been a 5-6 win team. Even with injuries, I think the Bears win handily 27-16.

My assumption is Gordon wants to feel 100% before returning and probably stops the minute he feels something. Until he gets over that mental hurdle, he is going to be stuck in this loop. At this point, I don't even consider him part of the team anymore. If he comes back and contributes, cool, but I am not betting on it. Trapilo had a traumatic injury and recovery and is out there months ahead of schedule, and Gordon can suit up because of soft tissue without a surgery to recover from?

I never understood how on one side of the coin, they say it takes time to get to know a system and your teammates (seems totally logical), but then they can trade for a player at the deadline who immediately contributes. What that tells me is individual skills still rule them all. If a guy is struggling because "he is still learning the system" then he probably is not very good to begin with.

No problemo!

If the Bears were to work out a trade, they would almost certainly need to include a player and the new player would have to get immediately restructured. To me, I think there is less of a chance something is done before the season. If anything happens, I think it would be at the trade deadline where the cap hit this year can be absorbed.

No, they were technically "over the cap". These moves get them under by about $5M which is typically the operating window for the year.

Once a player gets designated with that designation, and Yahoo catches up (sometimes a day or two later), you will have an option to select IR as one of you roster spots, freeing up a spot for another player. Once the player comes off designation, you won't be able to make any other transactions (free agent or waiver wire) until that players is moved back to one of the active spots and your roster is not over the player limit. Injuries have impacted the league so much over the years that we now have 3x IR slots, so you don't have to worry about losing a player to injury, dropping them, then losing them because of injury. The crazy part is we have had GMs lose 5-6 players and they still had to either carry them on their bench or drop them. So 3 was the sweep spot. The IR slot only works if the player carries that designation in the system.

Yeah, I forgot players from external teams can't be announced until today. So they will be on there, plus a few more.

Looks like with Christian Jones and Zavier Scott signing from external teams, there is at least one odd man out on the original 11-resignings. Could also be someone else going on IR and opening up a roster spot.