adam

I hope we are not. Like I said above, Stafford is the MVP of the Garbage Time League. He has been stat padding for a decade.

Rodgers has as many NFC Championship wins as Rex Grossman. Since Rodgers came into the league, the Packers have as many Super Bowl appearances as the Bears. Rodgers has lost his last 4 NFC Championship title games. This, by definition, is a loser.

Which basically makes the Bears what the Texans are now.

If he goes to the Colts, they are a 10 win team and right on the cusp of the playoffs. I don't think he elevates them any more than Rivers did.

There are some numbers that I have heard about the coverages the Bears played on the backend in 2018 vs 2019 and 2020. Supposedly there was a significant shift away from 2-High or a Cover-2 look. Pagano played more Cover-1 or Cover-3 which restricts Jackson's roaming ability because of his specific responsibilities over the top. I will believe it when I see it because to me it looks like he was playing not to get hurt and there was a distinct difference in his play prior to injury vs after.

Stafford has been the ultimate stat padding and Fantasy Football QB. He put up huge numbers on a losing team, mostly playing from behind and when a lot of teams were in prevent. I am not as high on him as others. To me he was on par with Cutler. He threw a quarter of all his TDs to Megatron. It's not hard to throw for 5k when you throw the ball 700 times. In 2012, he had 4967 yards passing but with only 20 TDs and 17 INTs. He had 727 attempts! That is insane. The year that he had 5k passing yards, he finished 3rd in the league in yards and 10 QBs had 4k. Eli Manning had 4933 yards that year. Would he be better than Foles/Trubisky, absolutely, but I don't know how much and I doubt that difference would be worth the trade value. Just my opinion.

It makes a lot of sense. He would be fairly cheap and could replace Ryan after a year or two.

In other news, Ragone is now the Falcons OC and Jay Rodgers left for LAC.

Very well respected, I don't mind this move at all. He has received a lot of praise from players and coaches.

What do you think? I like the passion, and if Nagy fails to improve the offense, Mike can slide into the HC position easily.

Most of the cap heads are predicting the wildest free agency period ever. It should be fun and interesting. It is almost open season.

It would not be until 2022 because they take into account performance incentives that may kick in during the season. That is how we lost a 6th rounder because of incentives made another player's compensation more than Daniel's in Detroit.

Also, you would have to expect the Bears would be an attractive destination for a free agent if we had Watson.

That's fair, here are the last 3 years of pick 15 and pick 16: #15 Jerry Jeudy, Dwayne Haskins, Kolton Miller #16 AJ Terrell, Brian Burns, Tremaine Edmunds You can't get more average than the two middle picks of the first round over the last 3 years. Again, would you trade those packages for Watson? The answer is hell yeah every time. If you are picking outside of the top 12, the odds of you hitting on a star is low enough to justify the trade for someone of Watson's caliber. As long as we didn't trade the house and only needed to address OL and WR in the draft (after trading for him), we would be an immediate contender.

You trade the contract, so the money goes to the new team. If you cut them, you pay the dead money (all the remaining guaranteed money on the contract).

So you wouldn't trade Gabe Carimi, Shea McClellin, and Kyle Long for Watson? How about Kevin White, Leonard Floyd, and Mitch Trubisky? Also, if you are a good team that makes the playoffs, you would be consistently drafting in the 20s. The #1 pick is worth 3000, the #24 pick is worth 720, so it would take 4x #24's to get the #1 pick. So if you view Watson as a #1 pick value, giving up 3 firsts would be worth it. The 16th pick is worth 1000, so you would have to expect to be drafting in the top 15 to lose out on that trade.

Toney would replace Patterson and be much better as a WR too. I love that pick. I'm ok with Trask that late because if it doesn't work, its not like a trade up to #2 and passing on 2 HoFers. It is hard to see Trask being worse than Trubisky just based on comparing their college tape. Getting OT early is huge. Overall, I like the draft, especially because there are no reaches and only one small school pick.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/01/19/salary-cap-could-be-in-the-range-of-180-million/ So it looks like the cap might be around $180M for 2021. That would be $4-5M more than the bottom, which would surely help out the Bears situation. It is crazy to think there will be teams over $30M in the hole. The Saints are $95M over the cap. Even if the cap didn't drop for 2021, they would still be $70M over the cap. Talk about some mismanagement. They may have to become serious trade partners instead of cutting and relying on dead money. Brees would cost $22M in dead money if he retires. The Eagles are $51M over, Falcons are $32M over, and the Packers and Rams are both $22M over. So these teams are going to have to make some tough decisions before the new league year (March 17th). https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/

So the lead teams look to be MIA and NYJ. SF, CHI, CAR, IND, DEN, WAS and NE were other teams mentioned as realistic candidates. My take is there is no way Houston is trading within their division, so IND is out. If they trade him within the conference, there is a chance they would have to face him every year (depending on schedules). I can't see them doing this and risking that every year for the next 15 years. Also, for a team like MIA, if they did trade with them, all they would be doing is getting their 1st rounder back that they traded for Tunsil, so it would be Watson for Tunsil and a first (in this year's draft), which would look even worse. So that leaves the NFC teams of SF, CHI, CAR, and WAS. So let's look at this year's draft capital, cap space, and highest-paid QBs: Best draft capital this year: CAR - #8, #39, $13M Cap, Bridgewater $21M AAV Easiest out for QB contract: SF - #12, #43, $22M Cap, Garoppolo $27.5M AAV Cap space availability: WAS - #19, #51, $43M Cap, Smith $23.5M AAV Cheapest starting QB to trade: CHI - #20, #52, $0 Cap, Foles $8M AAV Right now the Texans are $18M over the current cap. That may grow to more than that when the official cap comes out. It gets even worse in 2022 as the Texans have the lowest cap space of any team in 2022 right now. That's when Watson's deal kicks in and his cap hit balloons to $40M. So they have to be thinking about that as part of the equation. Watson's cap hit for 2021 is only $15.9M, so it's hard for me to believe they would go deeper in the hole cap-wise to move him. So they would unlikely trade for Bridgewater, Garoppolo, or Smith. On the flip side, Carolina can't absorb Bridgewater's dead money if they decided to trade for Watson and cut Bridgewater. The 49ers and Redskins could with their QBs. The Texans could take Foles and save $8M in cap space with a serviceable QB. To me, there is not much difference between those 3, Smith was the worst of the 3 and technically Garoppolo got outplayed by Nick Mullens, and with the added cap hit, Foles is actually the best deal and lowest risk. So I think it will come down to SF, WAS, and CHI as the landing spot if the Texans decide to move on from Watson. I still think he stays but you never know anymore.

Actually those have some valuable. Maybe not in and of themselves, but coupled with the other picks, they can move up in another round. They could take one of the comp picks and move up into the early 5th with their original 5th, and then take another comp and trade it with the current 6th to move into the late 5th. So there is some value there. Not a lot but some. Then you can use the last one on a punter, so you are not using original picks on special teamers.

Draft Update: Rookie Pool - Est $5M From what I am tracking, the Bears have 5 original picks and 3 comp picks for a total of 8 draft picks: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, (Comp picks: 6th, 6th, 6th) no 4th rounder - Trevis Gipson no 7th rounder - Eddie Pinero So no 4th, but 4x 6th rounders. I can see Pace wheeling and dealing with the house's money and those extra 6th rounders.

Of all the UFA's or potential cut candidates, the highest producing ones are ARob (WR), Hicks (DT), Patterson (WR), Gipson (S), and Santos (K). Now that doesn't count the few rotational guys that excelled (Urban, Edwards) but those are the losses that would hurt the most. Money-wise, it seems like ARob and Hicks are the most likely not to be back. It looks like they could bring Patterson, Gipson and Santos back on some reasonable deals. Guys like Trubisky, Leno, Massie, Graham, Skrine, Coward, Harris all had prominent roles and underachieved. So their losses may actually help the team. QB, WR, OT, and S has to be the early targets in the draft. Grab a punter with one of the 6th round comp picks (or trade into the 7th with a comp and grab one there).

Post-June 1 Cuts ($39.5M in potential savings) Hicks $1.5M Dead Money, $10.5M Cap Savings Leno $2.3M Dead Money, $9M Cap Savings Massie $1.3 Dead Money, $8M Cap Savings Graham $3M Dead Money, $7M Cap Savings Skrine $1.1M Dead Money, $5M Cap Savings This has to happen. If they also restructure Mack and Fuller, they can have about $35M after the rookie pool to fill 15 roster spots. If you assume 8-9 of those will be near league minimum deals for vets or 1-yr deals, that leaves about $25M for 6 spots, assuming you need to fill starting spots at QB, WR, LT, RT, SS, DL.