balta1701-A

Well then.

If it was 20-22 how much different would that be? In his 2nd year he only picked up 1 sack whereas every other year he's had 5-6, so that hurts him a little, and just based on his "number of tackles" it seems like his playing time picked up a lot starting in his 3rd year.

How much would the Bears save by cutting Bennett and could they just basically shift those savings directly to Smith?

Interestingly, if y'all recall, he only got playing time under Lovie Smith when Caleb Hanie was so bad they finally gave up on him completely. Now he's Lovie's starter.

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Problem right now might be that after signing Cutler and the other guys the Bears might not have much cap room to play with until guys can be cut and the new NFL FY starts.

I can't imagine the Bears having room for $10 million a year players and he would very likely still be one

But the Pats were 10th in the league in scoring defense, giving up 8.8 fewer points per game than the Bears.

(In theory, this should hit the strength and conditioning staff as well then).

To be fair the other way though..."The Cowboys management is doing the same thing!" is about the worst justification for a football decision you can make in the post-Al Davis era.

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To be fair, this woudl also allow a number of 10+ win teams into the playoffs as well. The Cardinals won 10 this year and would have had that 3rd wild card spot if it existed, they would have won both the NFC East and North if they were in those divisions, instead they missed the playoffs while being in the tough NFC west.

Nope, early 90's.

You're exactly right...but in order to make that the case, based on my reading, the Bears are taking the largest cap hit possible on Jay's deal in 2014 as it is currently written. The Bears have the opportunity, in future years in particular, to move things around to free up cap space in those years, but if I understand this contract, they are taking a large cap hit in 2014 in order to give them that flexibility in the future.

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IMO, the big advantage here comes in year 2 and in year 4. If Cutler earns the payday, you can restructure him in 2015 and open up a ****ton of cap space. If he plays 12 games and is slightly worse than this season, you ride it out the next 2 years and you have zero year 4 liability. The advantage isn't this season. This season strikes me as "biting the bullet".

I'd be really, really stunned if they reworked his contract this year. I've never seen a guy signed to a big deal that was reworked before a single snap was played.

The one downside is that the Bears really, really need cap space in 2014 if they want to recover that defense. That said...it could be possible that Emery secretly is thinking of 2014 as a rebuilding year and is going to pile Cutler's contract and Peppers's dead space all in 1 year, sign as many cheap veterans as he can, play some kids, maybe throw an extension for a guy or two in there, and come out for the pre-2015 offseason able to build a powerhouse.

The biggest success was Slausson, by far. DJ Williams the LB was one of those signings and he was the opening day starter...then missed the full season on IR. That's sort of the mixed bag you get from those signings. Some of the guys may be real values teams missed. Some may be undervalued because they're old/injury risks and if you are forced to count on them...you end up with major holes.

It took less than 1 minute of the broadcast for the announcers to note that the Chiefs have averaged about 29 yards per return on kickoffs and say "the Chiefs Special Teams have been absolutely brilliant". Their ST coach is Dave Toub.

My problem with saying this is that having a youth movement in the NFL requires the Bears to already have the youth on their team. They don't. The youth on their defense are guys like Shea, Bostic, and Conte. Heck, people are wanting to replace some of the youth for blowing the last play of the season. For the Bears to have a successful "youth movement" on defense, they're going to have to hit like 6 successful draft picks on defense next year. If they pull that off, they're going to the Super Bowl readily. What they're actually going to have to do is plug 2, maybe if you hope 3 holes in the upper parts of the rotation through the draft, and that assumes you don't miss and grab any busts in the first few rounds, which is tough on its own. That cuts the price a little, but you're still missing half a defense. The only place to fill that in is free agency. The bears don't have a ton of cap space so they're not going to be able to bring in a top flight FA defender, but they'll have enough cap space to bring in multiple veterans. That's what they're going to have to find - guys who are free agents and able to contribute but who aren't excessively overpaid. That also means...guys who washed out with other teams, guys who were hurt last year, or guys who are getting up in years. They almost have to pick up a bundle of guys like this in order to fill out the roster with their cap constraints. It could darn well work if Emery signs a couple guys and they stay healthy and Emery nails 2 or 3 draft picks. But IMO, this challenge makes the job Emery did last year of rebuilding the offense look easy.

No, in fact the person who wrote them has apologized and said his source was wrong.

I hope the answer is to find a way to spend like $10-$12 million to keep him, so that at least one of the DE slots is filled.

The problem I see with cutting him comes down to...$7.5 million is an absolutely enormous amount of dead cap space. IMO, that's half the amount that doomed the Redskins this season. When you start talking about a frontloaded deal for Cutler with a high cap hit combined with $7.5 million in dead cap space and very little production from the last first round pick added to that defense...the Bears are left with a ton of positions to fill and very little money to fill it with. On defense, they need minimum 2 DT's, 1 DE's, 1 LB's, and 1 CB at the starting level if they just want to fill out the roster, in addition to backups at basically every position, and that's keeping Conte and Wright as the starting safeties which I'm sure will thrill a lot of people. They were able to upgrade the O-Line and TE slots last year with a similar amount of cap space...but that's less than 1/2 the number of starting positions they need to fill on the defense right now.

They had a lot of cap space this year in general and they want to be able to have a quick, non-guaranteed out if his health gets worse over time. It makes sense in those areas. The problem is that they now can't afford to have any misses or injuries if they want to get any better on defense. The money isn't going to be there for big defensive signings when the team has so many different needs.