balta1701-A

Esp. now that he has a QB, I think ShanSr. will happily coach for several more years. He's only 60.

And that team would have to want Peppers more than other options (Freeney, IIRC, is very likely to be available this year as a free agent).

If the health issue is only "a virus", that's nothing. When they gave the initial report on NBC it sounded much worse.

Colts released a statement saying that Arians is fine, possibly a virus/ear infection kind of thing from some other rumors. Could impact him if he was hoping to interview in the next coulpe days.

But that doesn't just translate 1 to 1 when a player is traded. IIRC, if there's any signing bonus used to spread the cap hit out, that bonus all comes forwards if he's traded, making it much more expensive to trade him for the team removing him and requiring the team taking him on to be able to take on that $12 million as well.

Bruce Arians has had some sort of "an episode" at the team hotel this morning, nausea and severe headaches, rushed to a local hospital.

(I don't get who that's supposed to be). I should add "Josh McDaniels" to this list. That's about the worst decision I could imagine.

Isn't his cap hit nearly $20 million? I can't imagine a team trading anything more than a 3rd for him.

Is there any sign the Skins will allow an interview before they're eliminated?

Did Chris Williams even play a snap for the Bears this year?

Didn't want to hire him until after their bowl game was over.

They may very well be able to do both...particularly if they restructure a few other people...but if that's the case, that'll be about the end of the Bears offseason other than the draft. They're not going to be bringing in an all pro TE along with those 2, and they may find themselves unable to add additional depth along the O-line beyond the draft.

Out of the 7 names the Bears are known to have requested interviews with...there are 5 guys with backgrounds as offensive coordinators, 2 special teams guys, and 0 defensive coordinators/people with defensive backgrounds.

But if the Bears are sitting on $15-20 million in cap space, $5 million is held for the draft, and you are forced to spend $10 million on Jake Long, that simply does not leave enough space for both Melton and the remainder of a roster. That's the point I'm trying to stress here. The Bears might be able to restructure someone like Peppers or Cutler and come up with extra space, but if the numbers for a top flight LT are ~$10 million (and it will be), then there's a decent chance that your top flight LT means you have to let Melton go.

Yeah, 5th rounder...but remember the bust rate. There's a whole lotta guys no longer in football who were drafted in the 5th round too.

Would you prefer: A stud LT for >$10 million and losing Melton, or an average LT and keeping Melton?

Just for reference, I think giving this guy to a coach coming into a new city would be a terrible idea, whether the coach is a retread or not.

There's a decent chance that Carolina LT Jordan Gross will be a cap casualty.

The couple caveats I keep noting about the Cover 2 are...yes, we all got frustrated when Lovie's teams would go into prevent mode at 2:00, but that's not a knock against the cover 2, even if it is a knock against the coach's scheme. Second, the Bears have been highly flexible in adapting their scheme to their personnel and situations. Their most common defense this year was the cover-1. And third...the Cover 2 deserves a hell of a lot more credit than it gets. It gives up some points yes...but it has a remakable ability to slow down a high-flying passing attack. The best example I can give of this is last year's super bowl...2 bottom ranked defenses that got to the game because of high flying offenses, predicions of a huge scoring game, and a 21-17 final score that happened because both teams sat in the cover 2 the whole game, got pressure through their lines, and didn't give up the big play. It's the same reason that Rodgers's packers regularly score in the 20's against the Bears; if you can get pressure in that defense, a high flying passing attack punts to your team 8 times.

The biggest problem is...finding that player X tends to be the most difficult part of the 3-4, IMO. Those big, run-stopping nose tackles are tough to find, there's only a handful in the league, They're hard to keep healthy because of the insane body type requirements, and they can even be fairly inconsistent when you do find one (Raji comes to mind there).

The conclusion one might draw from this statement is...it may be in the Bears' interest to let Henry Melton walk and have cap space to use on the O-Line.

How much more would you pay for the younger one, and would you accept a lower-quality O-lineman as a consequence?

If he didn't already have one, he might consider doing something like that.

With Knox's speed, if he didn't have issues with catching and running routes...he'd be an MVP caliber player. His speed makes up for some of the other deficiences. Or at least it did. If that's all your #1 WR has, then you have a pretty darn weak WR corps, but that's no longer the case for the Bears. A 4th WR who basically gives you "Speed and isn't guaranteed to drop the ball when you tell him to run" is pretty useful when Brandon Marshall chews up 100 receptions a year.

Beartrap, what on earth is the deal with your signature? 3 large "Temporarily unavailable"s