balta1701-A

A couple things worth considering. I would certainly consider him, but I think that his play isn't worthy of the 20th pick in the draft. If the Bears move down or he's available in the 2nd, yes, I'm game. Secondly, he won't be Tebow, but like it or not, he'll be a significant distraction throughout training camp for both the staff and every player on the team. Every player on the team would have to figure out how to deal with being asked about Te'o, both because of the GF issue and because Notre Dame and the Chicago Area sort of share the same media market/fanbase at some level. That's not a disqualifier, but it's again, something to consider.

Counting draft holds you spent $28 million.

At the very least, it puts him into the NFL's substance abuse program, which means if he does anything else, he gets a substantial suspension. That will lower his stock overall since he's lost the first strike.

Just in case there was any doubt

If the Bears are in a position where there aren't matches for their needs available...they ought to trade down. If the LB ans OL candidates are off the board then another position (Probably d-line) had some guys that dropped, and teams will make deals to try to come up with those players.

I think if the Bears decide they want to deal with the Te'o circus (And it will be one next year, particularly coming out of ND), I'd really like to see them trade down 5-10 spots to do so.

Why? They have the 2nd smallest stadium in the league. They're going to sell the park out anyway. They don't need to care about the common fan spending money, they're fine with them watching it on TV. If they had a 100k person stadium, then they might have to worry about selling that final 20k tickets every week. They don't. They have one of the most powerful brands in the NFL. They own this city and every other sports team in the city knows it.

Actually Carimi's terrible rating was almost entirely from pass blocking. He was actually a solid run blocker last year, he was just the worst RT in the league in pass blocking.

That 4th WR/speed guy the Bears need?

Nobody wants to go to a Jacksonville game.

Cincy has a good amount of cap space again this year, I could see them wanting to pile up a number of impact players to really make a run at their division.

Cowboys are currently at $143 million committed on a $121 million cap. And that's with Romo on the last year of his deal and in need of extension.

I bet they could figure out a way to do that if Melton's contract isn't too extreme ($7 million or so and under). I don't think there's going to be a big demand for Urlacher's services outside of Chicago next year. Someone may take a flyer on him, but he didn't perform well last year, hasn't finished the last several seasons, is dealing with a knee that may never heal, and is another year older.

That was under the last administration though...

The Bears still should have built a Jerry-world sized park. They'd fill it with ease.

Just a reminder...you need to subtract about $5 million from whatever your total available salary cap room is for "Draft holds", money kept available to cover draft picks.

Problem is, all that money is guaranteed on the franchise tag. Can't move cap space around from year to year.

He still needs more bodies to work with...but adding a slight bit of actual planning to the O-Line game could work wonders.

He'd be a good option if you grabbed a guard in the 2nd or 4th round and also extended Louis.

Basically, the idea in a contract restructuring winds up being that you take a player who has a big cap hit this year and spread that cap hit out over future years. The downside of doing that with Peppers, for example...is that you make him a lot more expensive next year.

That puts them at around $21 million if you count $5 million for cap holds. It might be doable...but that's it for the Bears offseason if those 2 wind up with those #'s. Ends Urlacher's time here and forces the Bears to need a high level drafted LB while at it. Also makes it really hard to have any sort of legit O-Line depth, other than 4th/5th rounders.

$120.6 million.

How do you know for certain he hasn't lost a step or two because of all the leg injuries?

Perhaps this is the case...but the other thing that has happened to him has been a lot of leg injuries, hamstring pulls, nagging things, etc. How much has that impacted his speed? The difference between elite speed and really good speed for a guy in Hester's position would be really important.

People would have screamed a helluva lot more if he had held out through training camp and into the season.