balta1701-A
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Posts posted by balta1701-A
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I was about to make the same comparison production wise. He's bigger tho and can move inside to DT. That's why I used the Wooten comparison instead.
He's a player that is nice to have on the line, but I'm not sure at his price. 16 sacks in 4 years just doesn't warrant a decent contract to me. About half his price and I would really like the signing.
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.
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How much would the Bears save by cutting Bennett and could they just basically shift those savings directly to Smith?
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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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LinkChicago Bears free-agent quarterback Josh McCown told ESPN Radio’s “Mike & Mike” that his representatives have held discussions with four teams in advance of the NFL’s free-agency period which opens at 3 p.m. CT on Tuesday.McCown declined to specifically name the interested parties, but the belief in league circles is that the Bears, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New York Jets and Houston Texans are the organizations making the strongest push the sign the 34-year old veteran quarterback.
McCown re-emphasized that if he left Chicago, his home for parts of the last three seasons, it would be to pursue a full-time starting quarterback opportunity.
“I’m not going to get in to who I talked to,” McCown said. “There is a window and there is legal tampering but there are some shades on that window so I don’t know out of respect to those teams if we want to get into that right now. We’ve talked to four teams. There have been good discussions. We’ll take those as they come and evaluate those situations.
"To leave Chicago, it will be a situation where I’m looking to compete to start or to start and be able to kind of grow more as a player. The only way as a player that you can do that is on the field. That will definitely be something that we are looking at. So we’ll see. We’ll see what opportunities come and where we are at tomorrow.”
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Delmas is being courted by Pitt today. Wonder if we should sniff around. He is a FA that can be signed at any time, being he was released.
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.
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D. Ware for Dallas is set to make 16 mil this year and is signed thur 2017.
Just a thought but is reported that Dallas wants him to take a paycut, and they have huge cap problems.
So if he gets cut, should we go after him?
I can't imagine the Bears having room for $10 million a year players and he would very likely still be one
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Why do people keep bringing up the Pats??? They gave up just 20 less YPG than the Bears did.
But the Pats were 10th in the league in scoring defense, giving up 8.8 fewer points per game than the Bears.
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Touche.
Point kinda remains though. You can't expect to be any good when you have a glut of injuries all across the board, and particularly on the DL when the key to your D is just that, the DL.
(In theory, this should hit the strength and conditioning staff as well then).
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Who knows, but I just don't blame them for giving him another chance.....
Cowboys were in the same situation injury wise, had a defense that gave up 300 more yards than the Bears, and their staff has remained intact so far.
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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LinkIn Phair's case, he was dealt a difficult hand having lost Henry Melton and Nate Collins to season-ending injuries. But Phair was never able to get the best out of former first-round pick Shea McClellin (29 tackles, four sacks), and defensive tackle Stephen Paea, although hobbled most of the year with a turf toe injury, posted 29 tackles and 1 1/2 sacks in his third season, after producing at least two sacks in each of his first two years. Perennial Pro Bowler Julius Peppers, meanwhile, finished with 7 ½ sacks after generating 11 sacks or more in each of the last two years. Of all the club's defensive linemen expected to play key roles in 2013, it's probably safe to say that Corey Wootton was the only player to show any improvement of that group.No outside candidates to replace Phair have emerged, but it's likely the Bears will promote assistant defensive line coach Michael Sinclair to the post. In his first year with the Bears, Sinclair worked under head coach Marc Trestman as the defensive line coach of the Montreal Alouettes for all of the coach's years in the Canadian Football League.
Tibesar had also spent time with Trestman in the CFL, but worked all of 2012 as the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Purdue before joining the Bears. The Bears started the season with a veteran group at linebacker in D.J. Williams, James Anderson and Lance Briggs, but the position group fell off dramatically when forced to play rookies Jonathan Bostic and Khaseem Greene for extended periods due to injuries to the veterans.
While Bostic showed promise early on, he improved slightly, but not significantly enough as the season progressed, which was likely unacceptable for Trestman and general manager Phil Emery, given the rookie's tremendous upside, coupled with the fact he received plenty of snaps at one of the most important positions on Chicago's defense to gain enough experience to make a marked jump. Even after Briggs returned from a seven-game absence and was paired alongside Anderson and Bostic, the group still struggled.
Defensive coordinator Mel Tucker drew most of the criticism from the general public for the collapse of the franchise's once-vaunted defense in 2013, but several factors such as injuries conspired beyond his control as well as Phair and Tibesar. During the team's thorough self-evaluation over the past several days, the Bears looked closely at every aspect and likely determined they could coax more out of the linebackers and defensive line than Emery and Trestman thought Phair and Tibesar were capable of.
What does it mean for Tucker? That's unknown, but Trestman gave Tucker another vote of confidence when the team made the announcement Sunday about Phair and Tibesar. Tucker will join some of the team's other staff members on Monday in St. Petersburg, Fla., at the East-West Shrine Bowl.
“We believe Mel is the right person to lead our defensive unit,” Trestman said. “He fully understands where we need to improve, has the skill set and leadership to oversee the changes that need to be made, and to execute our plan to get the results we know are necessary.”
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I'm of the opinion that you should have to earn your way into the playoffs, and it should be difficult to get there. I don't like allowing more .500 level teams to sneak into the playoffs because then it becomes less important to win your division.
What I would like to see is them change the way the seedings work out. If a wild card team has a better record than a team that is a division winner, they should have home field advantage. It doesn't make any sense the way it is now.
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.
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When you speak of tradition, has it always been 6 teams making it? I'm a "young gun" so I don't know.
Nope, early 90's.
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I am probably ignorant about this but I understood the clause to really be about cap impact, Jay will still be paid $x dollars now but how that payment applies to the cap is the beauty of the clause. Jay is not giving up any money I don't think. Like I said I could be wrong but after listening to radio shows about it, that was my takeaway.
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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LinkThe debate is over, and the decision is made. The NFL is expanding its playoff structure, and all that's left to agree on are the procedural details.That conclusion seems obvious based on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's comments at a public interview Tuesday night in New York City. Goodell said adding two teams is "under serious consideration," pretty much the strongest terms he could speak in knowing it still must be approved by team owners. The options he discussed indicate the NFL is far along in the planning process.
Based on what Goodell said, it seems we can expect the league's competition committee to produce a proposal in the coming months and for a vote to occur as early as the March 23-26 owners meetings in Orlando, Fla. Based on experience, it would be unusual for Goodell to speak in such detail about a potential change if he doubted it would happen.
"It's something that the competition committee looked at last year and thinks there are some real benefits from a competitive standpoint," Goodell said. "They're going to study some aspects of that. Because when would those games occur? And one team would get a bye in each conference and you'd have six games on the weekend. So would you have three on Saturday, and three on Sunday? Or do you get one on Friday and two on Saturday and two on Sunday and one on Monday? I think those are the kinds of things we want to evaluate."
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I've never seen a contract designed for specifically that purpose. Not sure it hasn't happened but just don't recall it. Every other deal I've seen where early reworking happens (like you said, year 2 or later) typically had a signing bonus. Cutler's contract does not.
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".
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And the beauty of the deal as reported seems to be that now Emery has the flexibility to go either way. If the FA's he most wants aren't available, he can do what you suggest above. If he can land a few top-notch players for the D, he converts some portion of Cutler's salary to bonus and... BAM! Shortest rebuilding process in NFL history.
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.
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If true, that's a stroke of genius right there. Maximize flexibility while still forcing as much of Cutler's cap hit to year 1 as possible, which maximizes future cap space. If we pursue Michael Bennett and agree to terms needing more cap space….make it so. If we don't get him on our terms and sign a lesser quality player keep the cap hit on Cutler's deal
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.
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Pertaining to space. I remember them signing vets to the minimum and it not counting against the cap. Does anyone have info on if any of those guys paid off?
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.
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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.
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Yes, your a right but we're going to have a youth movement on defense and that means lower cap hits on that side of the ball. Take the cap hit early on Cutler's deal and then in 2-3 seasons his hit drops significantly. I assume with this structure on the salary guarantees if we cut Cutler after two seasons we don't have a lot of cap hit.
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.
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As well, are we really sure on the published numbers on Cutler's contract?
No, in fact the person who wrote them has apologized and said his source was wrong.
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Would you rather spend $7.5 in cap on him and cut him or $18 on him and keep him on the roster?
I think a restructure is possible. But that cap hit for the current deal is real, regardless.
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.
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2) LT2 has corrected me in the past on this and I'm sure he'll do so again but I'm pretty sure at this point we don't have much of an option on restructuring Peppers deal. Maybe we could do something by extending his deal but after what little he's done this season why in the world would we want to cripple our salary cap 3 or 4 years down the road by doing that? Cut him, take the cap hit and replace his production with someone who makes a few million. Extra cap space freed up goes to fix DT, or even add another DE. Or two because with SMC moving out of DE we need 3 DEs added to our roster unless one of the young guys steps up.
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.
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Ugh. I hope they intend on amending this year after year, shifting some of his salary to bonus. Otherwise this deal doesn't make sense to me.
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.
Bears cut Rosario - update - now signed
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