balta1701-A

He's due a $17 million roster bonus over the weekend.

Would you be willing to endure 2 seasons of 4 and 6 wins in the next 3 years in order to draft highly, give playing time to kids, and let them develop? Willing to let the careers of Urlacher, Peppers, and Tillman just end in order to really give an offense time to grow up together?

Has Carr signed yet?

My knees hurt.

But they also endured a couple years of frankly fairly mediocre teams in there, didn't they? 4-12 in 2005, 8-8 in 2006, then 6-10 in 2008 with a 13-3 year sandwiched in there for Favre's last year. They looked down the road and did accumulate a ton of talent, but endured missing the playoffs 3 times in 4 years and having 2 seasons well below .500 to get there.

I dunno about huge...

Basically, by saying "late first" I'm implying "Trading down from the 19th to the late first/early 2nd". Gets an extra 4th or 3rd rounder or so, where the Bears can have a number of positions that they add draft depth to.

One big difference though is that the Packers don't have the running back/running game that the Bears have. The Bears rushed for 500 yards more than the Packers last year, and that was with Forte missing a chunk of the year. The Packers can get everyone touches in that WR corps because they are much less effective running the ball.

The Bears are in a position where their WR corps is deep enough that a "Work in progress" WR wouldn't be a bad play if it was a good value pick in the late first or 2nd round. You can put the guy on the bench for most of the first year and let him develop/learn the playbook.

If Knox can't play right now, they're still in Ok territory, they can put Bennett, Marshall, Davis, Forte, Spaeth/fullback, and Hester/Weems/Sanzenbacher out there and that will still be a very solid core at the skill positions. Yeah, the last WR spot is a little bit iffy but you can play the matchup game there since you have both speed and hands guys. If Marshall goes down or gets suspended, then you're in the unfortunate boat of having a weaker group...but that alone won't cost the Bears a lot of games if he misses one or two. He has played 16 games almost every year, so that's not necessarily a huge worry...but there is still room there to add in playing time for 1 more player if they want to go that way. The Bears are going to have a lot of assets tied up in WR for the next few years with Marshall and Bennett...adding the 19th pick to that mold is a lot. If they were to trade down, maybe targeting Hill (he's supposed to be late first right?), that could be a reasonable strategy that gives a very deep WR corps.

The fact that they signed Marshall doesn't change the fact that Lovie was dining with WR's at the combine. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they wanted to draft a WR now and figured that his playing time will grow as the season goes on.

How does it look at the bottom of the draft (4th-6th rounds?) The Bears shouldn't spend a top 3 rounder on a TE now unless they really like someone, but trying to find a draft and develop guy would still be reasonable.

It's actually possible that the Bears want to take a WR highly in the draft and actually have playing time for him in order to develop someone along with Cutler...and if they actually want to develop a player, then Royal would honestly be in the way.

Trib

He was on a 1 year deal so a cut is not necessary, he's a not-in-demand free agent.

Then the team would have released him already. They're clearly expecting him to give it a shot at some point.

If you count kick returners, 2 more WR would put the Bears WR roster as: Marshall Bennett WR 1 WR 2 Knox Hester Weems That's 7 roster spots. I can see where the Bears could use 1 more pass catching threat and currently even have room to draft a WR, but 2 is actually putting more roster spots to the WR than they probably can afford.

If he's healthy enough to stay on the field, Bennett is clearly going to be a very useful option, especially if Marshall's presence means he's regularly single-covered...but there are still some catches to go around here, if Knox isn't going to be ready. Right now the Bears 3 big receiving threats are Marshall, Bennett, and Forte, with Knox, Hester, and Weems covering "Gimmick/occasional plays/maybe missing part of the season", and Sanzenbacher possibly as an injury fillin/hands guy who also winds up on special teams. There's room there for either a tight end who grabs a good number of catches or another WR who grabs a good number and pushes the 3 faster guys farther down the list.

Eh, I don't know of too many teams who sport 2 different 6'3"+ wideouts.

How are you defining the slot/outside guys? I always thought of a slot guy as more of a possession, over the middle kind of guy, and I think I put Bennett in that role, while the "outside guy" in the 2 spot is a nice deep threat, which if they're healthy Hester and Knox do sorta fill that role. With Weems on board I'm not sure if they count that role as filled or not. He's only been a 10 catch a year guy with the Falcons but the Bears might want to expand his role there as well. If they think he's just a 10 catch a year gimmick guy, then the Bears could still use an additional WR, but it's not a giant priority now...a 2nd-3rd round priority perhaps. TE and the defensive spots are moving up the priority list now.

Carlson cut short his visit with the Chiefs and is now on to visit the Vikings, where ESPN says he's expected to sign.

DUI/totaling a car and leaving the scene of an accident. Might not be what some athletes get away with, but comparable to this incident with Marshall...

The Bucs were so far under the cap that they had no choice. THe minimum spending limits haven't kicked in yet but they had like $50 million to blow, and it might well have been hard to spend that much next offseason if they didn't make some moves now.

Here's about as clear of a statement as you can get:

Yes, they could easily be worse than Webb, and I can say that with no hesitation because the Bears employed a backup tackle last year who was significantly worse than Webb in Omiyale. It is definitely possible to be a lot worse. The Bears still at least need to add depth at tackle to replace Omiyale...it was pathetic that their backup tackle was so bad their only option was to move one of their young guards out to tackle for 1/2 the season. Putting a RT at LT might be an upgrade over Omiyale, but it might not be the pass blocking upgrade the Bears want. There were a ton of issues last year with the line setup that would have made it difficult for anyone to succeed in that spot. So no, I can't honestly judge where Webb sits...but I will certainly say that the future of the coaching staff hangs on making that decision correctly.