balta1701-A

I'm surprised the Bears made this move without first doing anything to anyone else's contract.

Link Melton would take $8.450 to keep.

The sad thing is he's probably right...Webb in 2010 was comparably bad with Omiyale and Orlando Pace from when the Bears had them...which tells a whole lot of the story of the Bears offense the last few years. What that ought to say is how bad of a job the Bears did in evaluating those other guys in that a struggling 7th round pick who needed several years was equally rotten.

That makes an extra $3 million or so for the Bears to spend.

So, that post basically says Carimi was fine, Orlando Pace was tolerable, and Omiyale was better. Yeah, I can officially call this entire thread a "Waste of my time". None of those 3 had a stretch of solid play as long as Webb's last year and you're joking if you want to tell me Omiyale was better than Webb was with the Bears.

One thing worth noting is that this almost certainly puts him into the NFL substance abuse program. It means he gets treatment, but it also means he gets suspended if he's caught with anything else.

I don't think this would be Russell's 2nd chance, I think it'd be much closer to his 5th.

The Cowboys are way, way, way over the cap right now. Now that the Jets did their bloodbath and the Saints have done a little, I think the Cowboys are the farthest over the cap of any team in the league, and they're looking at having to figure out a way to extend Romo's deal this year as well since he's a free agent following 2013 (that also means you're not going to save a lot with his extension since he's played most of his deal already).

Well, this ought to add some spice to the site.

This is a really inaccurate description of what went down. He went into the season as the starting RT, and they stuck with him probably longer than they should have given how unreliable he was in pass protection. His time at RG seemed much more like an opportunity to get back into the game and see if he could do anything after another player got hurt, certainly not "dicking around with him". If he'd been anywhere close to average as a RT, he wouldn't ever have sniffed RG. He only got there because his play at RT was so bad he wound up benched.

Hasn't he been injured a lot recently? What he wants to be paid may not matter.

Tom Brady signs contract extension which should clear something like $7 million in additional cap space for New England. Obviously reasonable to speculate this was done with Welker in mind.

Where is patterson supposed to go?

That's how they kept doing things once the season started too!

Yes, he could start for a significant number of teams in the league. GM's don't have the luxury of paying attention only to what a player did 2 years ago when they're able to contribute right now. A great example is Andy Levitre. He was on a line that has simply been awful the last few years, but people here still want him. People aren't blaming him for the line being bad. Here's a discussion including the PFF numbers.

Especially when the LG is looking away from Matthews (so that both inside and outside moves are available).

If the Bears want Patterson's job as a rookie to be "Run the fly route and learn as much as you can", I bet he'd be able to handle that.

He also has some skill as a kick returner.

It's a coaches' job to say things like thatabout his players coming out of college. If he talks guys up and they get drafted highly, it helps his recruiting program.

Not just that, but in the worst scheme setup imaginable. "Here, go block this guy one on one the whole game while we try to throw it deep and don't run the ball". Augh. That said, some people aren't going to be convinced, and I'll respect that. For all I know, management may not be convinced. On that one, we'll see.

Worth noting; not having a first round pick would probably save the Bears a couple million in cap space this year.

I don't know what they're thinking, but if I was in their position, I'd be looking to strengthen the LG position first.

Certainly seemed like last year, the Bears got to roughly the amount that they supposedly had available and then were still able to sign a number of additional people.

Running a 4.55 is the kind of thing he needs to do if he wants to be a mid to late first round pick.

To be fair, Tennessee's O-line was actually pretty solid last year, they were able to move the ball against most teams not named Alabama, had a decent running game despite no real quality feature back. They were not very good last year because their defense was terrible and their QB cracked under late-game pressure.