adam

Trading only once for both picks in the 2nd, once with DAL, and once with BUF yielded this: Your Picks: Round 2 Pick 19 (DAL): AJ Terrell, CB, Clemson (A) Round 2 Pick 22 (BUF): Ashtyn Davis, FS/SS, California (B+) Round 3 Pick 18 (DAL): Ben Bredeson, OG, Michigan (A+) Round 3 Pick 22 (BUF): Brycen Hopkins, TE, Purdue (A+) Round 5 Pick 17: Devin Duvernay, WR, Texas (A+) Round 6 Pick 17: Anthony McFarland, RB, Maryland (A+) Round 6 Pick 21: Brandon Pili, DT, USC (A+) Round 7 Pick 12: Justin Herron, OT, Wake Forest (A+) Round 7 Pick 19: Rodrigo Blankenship, K, Georgia (A+)

QB (2): +Foles, Trubisky (-Daniel) RB (3): Montgomery, Cohen, +Nall (-Davis, Whyte) WR (5): Robinson, Miller, Patterson, Ridley, Wims (-Gabriel) TE (8): Burton, Shaheen, Braunecker, +Horsted, +Raymond, +Harris, +Graham, +Saubert (-Sowell) OL (9): Leno, Whitehair, Daniels, Massie, Coward, +Bars, +Levin, +Boyd, +Mustipher (-Long, Larsen, Lucas) DL (5): Hicks, Goldman, Nichols, Robertson-Harris, Anderson (-Williams) OLB (5): Mack, +Quinn, Irving, +Mingo, +Vaughters (-Floyd, Lynch) ILB (5): Trevathan, Smith, Iyiegbuniwe, Woods, +Bond (-Kwiatkoski, Pierre-Louis) CB (8): Fuller, Skrine, Toliver, Shelley, +Roberson, +Burns, +Brice, +Denmark (-Amukamara) S (3): Jackson, Bush, +Lucas (-Houston-Carson, Clinton-Dix, McManis) ST (3): Pineiro, O'Donnell, Scales This is the top 56 players under contract now with the players that were on the 2019 opening roster that were lost in parentheses. Players with a + are new to the 53-man from after opening day last year or during the offseason. In terms of starting positions, it looks like they are narrowing their draft focus in the 2nd round to SS and RG. I think they are going to let Tolliver/Roberson/Burns fight for CB2. Quinn fills Floyd's spot. I see Lucas as more depth at S, and Mingo taking Lynch's reps. I can see them adding a RB, WR, DL in the later rounds. I would still rather trade down and pick up some additional mid-round picks. As I do the mock drafts, the meat of the draft is mid-50's to mid-80's, so hopefully we can pick up an extra pick in that range.

We also don't have McManis back (yet), so as a core special teamer and someone to push Irving for Edge3 is great. Also, he has the skills based on his draft status, so hopefully he can find some magic playing with Mack, Quinn, Hicks, Jackson, Smith, Trevathan, Fuller, etc.

Another former first rounder signed, mainly a St player but can play Edge too.

I took a look at the roster and moves the team has made since the end of the season to see where the holes were in the 53-man roster to see where they will look next. Based on that, here are some positions they will address: 1. Safety - The team lost HHCD, McManis, and Houston-Carson this offseason, 3 of 5 opening day safeties. I think they have a chance to bring back Houston-Carson, and maybe even McManis, but right now the team is down 3 safeties, the most of any position group on the team. 2. OL - The team lost Long, Lucas, and Larsen from the opening day roster, but eventually gained Bars. However, the team is down at least 2 OL right now. 3. ILB - The team lost Kwit and KPL and have not added any yet, so they are down 2 ILBs. So with at least two roster spots open for Safety, OL, and ILB, you have to believe those will be main targets going forward. The next few position groups have at least one hole: 4. RB - The team lost Davis and Whyte from their opening day roster and gained Nall during the season, still down at least 1. 5. WR - The team lost Gabriel and have not added a WR. Down 1. 6. DL - The team lost Williams and have not added a DL. Down 1. 7. OLB - The team lost Floyd and Lynch, and gained Quinn, so down 1. That's it, QB, TE, and CB do not have any holes or have a surplus. Positions of excess: right now the team has too many TEs and CBs, so I don't think they will target any, we had 4x TEs on the opening day roster last season and now have 7 on the roster (Burton, Shaheen, Braunecker, Horsted, Harris, Holtz, and Graham), so something will have to give there. For CBs, they lost Prince but added Roberson and Burns with Fuller, Skrine, Tolliver, and Shelley on the roster. So they are plus one there too. My assumption is all the picks within the first 6 rounds will make the roster. That is now 2x 2nds, a 5th, and 2x 6ths. That is 5 players. With 11 holes to fill, that means the Bears will need to make at least 6 more FA acquisitions to address the shortages.

Artie Burns, former 1st round pick, signs a one-year deal with Bears:

Yeah, if cut/released, you do not get compensation for them. However, we have the max right now with 4x Comp picks (all 6th rounders) and we can still sign a guy that would negate one and still have 4x, except we would have 3x 6th rounders and 1x 7th rounder (Lucas). You also forgot Daniel. Quinn negates Kwit, then we get 4x 6ths for Daniel, Williams, KPL, and HHCD. Since 4x is the max, we don't gain one for Lucas. If we sign someone else that compensates another team, we lose one of our 6th's then gain a 7th for Lucas.

The salary is surprising as it is less than he took with us last year.

Stinger, I look at it this way, we have added Quinn for Floyd, but still need CB and SS. On offense, we have no RG, and we went from either Burton or Shaheen to Graham. Burton is the 6th highest paid TE in the league (AV) and Graham will come in around 12-15th. So we are paying two TEs starter level money and neither are worth it. So the only logical move is to cut/trade Burton/Shaheen/Braunecker. If you designated all of them as post-June 1 cuts, you could save $5.5M on the cap with $6.5M in dead cap. To me that's worth it. Then it makes sense to have Graham, Holtz, and Horsted as the 3x TEs. I would add Anthony Sherman as a FB to that mix. If you extend ARob, you can save about $5M on the cap to bring in a SS (Karl Joseph or Vonn Bell) With the remaining cap you have to look at bring in a vet RG and a CB. It can be done. I would say in all of this, the biggest factor for the Bears is how the other teams in the Division are doing. The Vikings traded Diggs, so there is no way that's not a downgrade and the Lions are in full rebuild mode trading everyone. So that leaves the Packers who are relatively the same team from last year. So we have a chance to pick up a game or two just by how the rest of the division is shaking out.

Foles career is so weird. The dude has played 58 games and has 10x 300-yard games, yet 4 of them were 400-yard games. In his 400 yard games, he has 16 TDs and 4 INTs. So this guys stats are really skewed by a few insane games. Same for the playoffs, he had two good games in the playoffs that ultimately led to a SB win. He was replaced in Philly by Sam Bradford, then replaced in STL by Jared Goff, sat behind Alex Smith in KC, then behind Wentz in Philly, then got replaced by Minshew in JAX. So this is the guy that is going to be magically better than all the guys he couldn't beat out for a job? I am still not seeing how he is a Nagy QB either, he doesn't run RPOs. He has 129 carries in his lifetime for 390 yards (almost all scrambles). So maybe the RPOs were for Mitch and Nagy wanted to do something else. We will see this year.

My only hope is that whoever wins out is better than Trubisky was in 2019. That's all I ask. Someone that can score more than 17 points a game. Hopefully Foles is the answer and he kills it. I am hopeful for him but just not optimistic based on his history. If he was that good we wouldn't have him right now.

Even after some contract mods, there is very little left to bring in anyone else. Quinn was it. The remainder of the guys will be depth. I believe Pace thinks TE and QB are fixed. So he will address OG, CB, and S with the 2nd round picks and hopefully address at least one of the positions with a one-year flyer free agent. Maybe he can get Vonn Bell or Tavon Wilson to play SS, Jimmy Smith for CB, Stefen Wisniewski, OG or maybe someone like Anthony Sherman, FB.

What is this though? Is he the starter? Is he here to help Trubisky learn to read defenses as a high school level? Like what's the plan here? Same for TE. It's a rotation of overpaid, crappy players. Do you want Burton in there with a phantom injury? Graham who can't block or run anymore? How about Shaheen who is so unathletic he gets hurt stretching? This is the 2020 plan? Foles and Trubisky battling it out at QB, Graham and Burton at TE? Of all the outcomes, this is probably the worst. I would've rather done nothing, kept the 4th rounder and the cap space instead of bringing on this dead weight. My prediction right now is 5-11. The biggest problems on the team have not been addressed and we are out of cap space. We still need a TE, a QB, a WR3, a CB, a SS, and depth at ILB and DL. We could also use upgrades at OT. Quinn, Graham, and Foles have consumed the remaining cap. Outside of a few C-list FA's on $1M one-year deals, that's all we have left, and now only 2x 2nd rounders to fill 5-6 holes. This is unbelievable. Honestly, how much better is Foles and Graham than Glennon and Sims.

This is it. Foles and Graham? That's the answer. We get an upgrade with Quinn over Floyd, a slight downgrade at rotational ILB, and probably CB and S. Our TE room is still weak and we have no RG and our OT's suck. Adding Foles did nothing to improve QB unless you consider him an upgrade over Daniel. I feel like this is it for Pace. He failed on every first-round pick outside of Smith and the jury is still out on him after that weird situation last year. I can see Smith being one of those players that retires young. White, Floyd, Trubisky, and Shaheen. Epic early draft failures. Then he gives up the remaining capital for Mack, which didn't win us anything. Now we are going to be stuck with an aging core with huge cap hits during a rebuild. If these were all-in moves, Pace is playing checkers while the rest of the NFL was playing chess.

To start? Is he the backup? Even with that extra knowledge, what is Foles' ceiling? 2013 was a crazy anomaly in his career. Outside of that season and those numbers he has been inferior to Trubisky in everything but TDs. His career-high in yards is 2891. What a joke. Mike Glennon's career-high 2608.

Oh crap, outside of Foles' ridiculous 2013 season where he threw 27 TDs and 2 INTs, he has 44 TDs to 33 INTs. Trubisky has 48-29. This is a joke right. This guy is going to do nothing for us.

I am in the middle on this one. Here are our 2x QB's career stats: QB A - 48 starts, 26-22 Record, 1051-1698, 61.9%, 11901 yds, 71 TD, 35 INT, 7.0 Y/A QB B - 41 starts, 23-18 Record, 811-1280, 63.4%, 8554 yds, 48 TD, 29 INT, 6.7 Y/A Foles has never started more than 11 games in his career in a single season, and has only started 10 or more twice. This is his 6th different team in 7 years. He reminds me of Parkey as a QB. I would've preferred Dalton, but I guess they were looking for someone with more experience with Nagy's system. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, open competition, or an anointed starter.

Lasted only one year in Philadelphia. I think he will see more carries in Miami.

That is a concern, but injuries are very hard to plan for. Each slot has a value, and even though Kwit and KPL did really good when they played, you can't keep everyone. Clearly the team felt that Trevathan was the one guy they had to retain. Right now the Bears are in line for 3x 6th Round comp picks (Kwit and Quinn cancel out), then Daniel, KPL, and Williams all qualify as 6th Round comps for 2021. That is decent considering that is all the Bears got for Howard.

Good luck NFL QBs. Khalil Mack, Robert Quinn, Eddie Goldman, Akiem Hicks, Roquan Smith, Danny Trevathan, RRH all coming at you every down.

I hope not, we have a bunch of 2nd and 3rd tier TEs and have $15M committed to them.

This is literally a Dion Sims move. I don't care about the good moves Pace makes, he continually does these head scratchers and I feel like we will never get back to the top with him at the helm. His reluctance to move away from mistakes and his penchant for overpaying guys like this really hurts the team. There are problem 1,000 players I would rather have for that money than Jimmy Graham, maybe more. Terrible terrible move.

I would be ok with 4-5M, but $8M is crazy money for a bad TE on the decline. I would rather have Delanie Walker for that price.

Watson has thrown half of his completions to Hopkins. His production is going to take a huge hit. I can see more INTs and less yards/TDs. I am still shocked that the Texans did that. ARZ is going to have a crazy passing attack.

The only thing that saves us is this does not count against comp picks since he was cut. So we would still get comp for Kwit, maybe Prince and Gabriel.