adam

My prediction is Wright gets cut, and Braverman ends up on the P.S. White 72-954 - 8 Meredith 44-526 - 3 (misses 4 games due to thumb injury) Cruz 52-613 - 4 Miller 42-428 - 3 Wheaton 38-558 - 2 Sims 33-316- 3 Shaheen 20-216 - 2 This does not include RB's or other WR/TE's with less than 20 receptions. I think we have a QB change near the bye, so some guys get targeted more than others based on the QB and game plan. I think White has a strong but not spectacular year, and the TE three-headed monster appears totaling 95-960 - 8 TDs not including a little from Brown. I think Shaheen starts the year slow but plays a bigger role the last 4 weeks. Cruz ends up with the 2nd most in all the categories.

If my math is correct, that is 512 completions and 5,856 yards passing, both destroying NFL records. These numbers are borderline laughable. Braverman won't make the active roster, and I would be shocked if Cunningham had that production. Also, I doubt Cohen has more than 20-30 rushes all year, if he even makes the team.

#Bears waive QB Connor Shaw. per Twitterverse I liked his potential, but with Trubisky, Glennon, and Sanchez, not much room for him.

Interesting that we pull the trigger after the White injury.

Dak started as a rookie from Week 1?

http://www.chicagobears.com/news/article-1...80-4c02c2055a19 A few things to note. The notion that Glennon was not called or notified at all is now completely debunked. He was called 10 minutes after the pick and the next morning. So this also ties back into the secrecy scenario and the need to keep things quiet. Glennon was at the Bears draft party, so why would they invite him, then draft a QB in the 1st...... I am glad Glennon is taking all this in stride, or at least saying the right things. I am actually hoping he has a great year, which will ultimately benefit us in some way shape or form.

Some great photos in the gallery of that article. The White disappearance (potential injury or aggravation of injury) is concerning but still too early to be too worried about it.

Man, if that was the plan, Pace is a genius. He had everyone fooled. I agree on the 2018 perspective, we are still a year away from seriously competing unless a few players make massive jumps this year.

Could they be concerned about Long's ankle, and the left side will need the opposite dominant leg than the right side.

Lucky, the only other option would be if Glennon is playing good but not great and we are out of the playoff picture before the trading deadline, I would potentially look to move Glennon then and either start Shaw/Sanchez, or Trubisky if he is ready. There is no rush, but I also don't want to miss on the window to move Glennon when that seems to be the ultimate plan.

There has to be a logical way to think about this. Each player has a grade at each position, by projecting what they would do at the new position, you would just need to find the right combination where you are not making the overall line grade worse than before. Massie and Leno were the clear weak links to the line, so we would need to replace them while only having a minimal impact to the interior. Have other teams moved Pro Bowl Centers out to Guard and Tackle before?

Scouts and GM's don't have to always agree, they get a vote, but that's it. Also, there is the PR backlash, does the GM have enough balls to sell the house on a QB and put all his chips on the table and sink or swim with that QB? I think Pace basically did that by moving up 1 pick. The Bears were in a unique position to give up the least but still give the traded team (SF) a great pick (#3) in return. So SF gets "their" guy and a couple of extra picks to look like clear winners and masterminds. No other team had that capital to give besides CLE but due to their sabermetrics view of the world, that would not be in line with their new process. Cleveland might've been fielding calls for #1 and turned down all offers. Since teams don't have to discuss who they would pick in the trade, there could've been several teams looking to move up to take Trubisky. We know we had offers to move up to #3 and SF had offers to move up to #2, so it is logical to assume the same happened for CLE at #1, and some of those could've been for Trubisky. Based on some other articles on the topic, Trubisky was #1 (on his small sample size), so that possibly changed other teams assessments of him. They had him #1, over Luck, Newton, Mariota, Winston, Carr, Wentz, not Manziel, Manuel, Bridgewater and Locker, though I am sure he was rated higher than all of them. After hearing about the rookie minicamps and the struggles of Mahomes and Watson, I think we found a gem in Trubisky. Just reading thru some of the articles of the QB's and the initial impressions, most of Watson's are praising him for his "work ethic" (like saying she has a nice personality) but not comparable to the high praise Trubisky has already seen for that small timeframe. Mahomes has basically received the "work in progress" "not ready for primetime" tag. So just on that, I think Pace got it right. I wanted Watson, and was ok with him at #3, so I hope Pace proves me wrong.

3 scouts had him rated one of the best to come out in the last few years, but I think the other 29 had him rated pretty high too. The problem with this is most teams that were not looking for a 1st or 2nd round Qb probably didn't scout him that hard, so the true assessments will come from only a handful of scouts and teams. If you count the Bears, that is 4 teams that had him very highly rated as well. If he started more than one season, he is definitely going #1 to Cleveland. We will see how it works out, but Cleveland has now passed on Wentz, Trubisky, and Watson.

Wow, I really hope Floyd explodes like that because that would easily make us a top 10 defense. However, I see 10 as more of a realistic sack total. I don't see Glennon having better numbers than Cutler's best year in Chicago for yards and TDs. I think he will be more around 3,600 yards and 25 TDs with a similar TD/INT ratio. Howard and Cohen numbers look legit. Who knows about the receiving corps and how Miller and Sims will play into Shaheen's numbers. I hope White is better than that. The defensive numbers (other than Floyd's sack total) look fair, and I am actually liking the look of our new secondary.

Also, remember a move like the Trubisky trade actually buys him and Fox a few more years. They now get the benefit of the doubt to grow this young QB. So I can't see any of them leaving in the next 2-3 years regardless of the outcome. At most they would move Fox for Payton or Harbaugh. This was Pace's 3rd draft, so this year is the first year you normally can say it is "his" team. He has had 3 offseasons to shape the 53 man roster to his liking. I believe there are only 10 players left on the entire roster from the pre-Pace era: (O'Donnell, Long, Houston, Young, Fuller, Bellamy, Carey, Jones, Leno, McManis) and a few are at risk of being cut before the season starts. So this is his team now. No more excuses, we need to be better. With a clean bill of health and some rested players (those that were injured played less), we should see a little correction from last year.

Anything you can do to replace both tackles will be a line upgrade. So I would like to see: Whitehair, Sitton, Grasu, Morgan, Long Long has experience on the right side and Whitehair has experience on the left side. They can't be any worse than Leno and Massie. The issue is by making a move like this, we weaken the interior of the line because Long/Whitehair is better than Morgan/Grasu. I like for the line to have some consistency, so the only other option for would be leaving Whitehair in place where he was playing at an All-Pro level, and then move Long to one of the tackles, leaving the other in place.

In regards to a new coach, I also heard Sean Payton might be an option after this year, reuniting him with Pace. Payton went to H.S. in Naperville and college at EIU. He also shares a name with the GOAT, so there would be that too.

Fangio summarized (all comments from article):

Unframed free agents is an interesting way to put it. I would think a few make the PS, but I think Phillips and Gentry both have a chance to make the 53-man roster.

We won over 30 years ago, so using us as an example is probably not the best way to support your argument. Also, some will argue with some good data to back it up that our 1986 defense was even better than our 1985 defense, yet we lost in the Divisional Round, probably needed a better QB.

I don't know if comparing one player (QB) to an entire side of the football is a fair comparison to start with. I think of it this way; what one position, if you were to draft a future HoFer in would have the biggest impact on the team? QB without a doubt. Do you not agree? So just say we drafted Garrett instead of Trubisky, but both are going to be future HoFers, which one makes our team (more) better? I think Houston is an interesting case of defense vs QB, they had potentially one of the worst QB positions ever to make the playoffs, but their defense was good enough to carry them to the playoffs. So you would think hey defense is more important than QB. However, they did that without arguably the best defensive player in the league. So the value of the best defensive player in the league was displayed and it was nowhere near the loss of a MVP-caliber QB. So 1v1, QB wins. I would say defense as a unit may be more valuable than any one player, but it would be a close valuation to franchise QB. Since we haven't won one in over 30 years and we haven't had a true franchise QB, so I say you find the franchise QB at all costs, then build the team around him.

I think your list answers the question pretty soundly, you need a franchise QB. Even if they have a down year statistically, they did enough to win when they were not at their best. Once you have the franchise QB, you need to have a decent run game and a good to great defense that is opportunistic. I think the strongest correlation to success has been turnover ratio and QB Rating differential. Also, if you take those anomalies into consideration, like the 2007 Giants, who literally got every break possible, you would see them beating teams with great QB's (Giants beat Romo and Favre). So I say, yes to franchise QB.

That is worth at least 2 additional receptions and 1 first down per game according to PFF.

Is that your projection? That would be impressive, especially since Hill only had 267 rushing yards (half of those on 2 runs) and 593 receiving yards. I am thinking more along the lines of 300 rushing and 500 receiving yards and 5 TD's.

I like the idea, everything is based on odds, so the more darts, the greater the chance of a bulls-eye. Also, it is great to bring in competition to raise the level of play of everyone and improve the bottom half of the 53 man roster.