balta1701-A

But they have a whole lot of other spots to fill too, one of the reasons they have a lot of cap space is that they have a lot people whose contracts ended...which means they have a lot of players lost.

Supposedly a big part of the reason why they lost this space was that they overloaded contracts early in 2010 in the uncapped year...so, they may have lost this batch of cap space because of shenanigans like that.

They definitely have the money, no one knows about the willingness.

LInk

And they now have a ton of positions of need and no draft picks to fill them with, so it's almost impossible for them to go big on any one player.

Frankly, I think if it were easily done, it'd be done already when the team doesn't have to compete with the rest of the league for him. The only reasons why it wouldn't be done so far are...if he thinks he's worth more on the open market than teh Bears, or the Bears want to test their other options before moving on him.

I'd happily take him if he were a free agent and available at a reasonable price.

I'm thinking this is an easy sack.

The part where it says TE should be far down the list of priorities. If that position is far down the list of priorities, then it doesn't get Kellen Davis signed because signing him is a low priority. Upgrading the position from last year can be considered a low priority. But having someone at the position must be a high priority.

49ers to give Moss a workout also.

Seriously think that Minny woudln't have just drafted Griffin?

Kellen Davis is not a tight end on the Chicago Bears right now. The only Tight End the Chicago Bears have under contract is Spaeth.

Link

I can't say exactly what they were thinking, but if they thought they had a shot at one more run at a title last year with Manning, then it makes some sense...because if you've just had a super bowl run but then you have to replace people for cap reasons, people won't mind quite as much.

Seriously though, with Manning being a huge cap hit, Freeney being a huge cap hit, and the team already starting to go downhill before Manning got hurt, their position on bringing those guys back was horrible. It's never easy to know exact numbers, but I mean, they just cut so many guys, Clark, Addai, Bullitt, Brackett, and they're still not in great shape. And that was with Wayne, Garcon, Mathis, and more already being free agents. Bringing guys back would have been really, really rough, and they really couldn't have restructured Manning's deal to save anything since he was just in the first year of it.

The problem there is that if you're stockpiling draft picks, you're getting guys who you expect to be carrying your team in what, 2-3 years? They can be contributors as rookies, but you stockpile first and second rounders hoping to win in a couple years when they all start to mature together. Peyton Manning needs to be in a spot where he can win now. You're not going to re-grow a new team around a Peyton Manning with 2-3 years of extra draft picks if you don't know that Peyton Manning will even be playing in a couple years, and you'd be spending your entire cap on Manning and having him unhappy and surrounded by Rookies to boot.

I've been told that it would have been exceedingly difficult for the Colts to trade Manning with his current contract, because the Colts would have taken a huge cap hit, as would any team that signed him. I thought they needed to try to move him for a while but the cap seems to have been the biggest issue. Manning, of course, wants his new team to win, and having more draft picks helps his new team win, so he's not going to renegotiate his contract to help the Colts trade him.

But you can't take the player out of the equation, that's the whole issue. They get a QB that presumably they think is a legit #1 guy. If he winds up being that, a multi-year pro-bowler at that position, that's worth multiple draft picks.

That's only really true though if Washington can't climb out of the top 10 in the draft. If Washington spends their cap space this year and then gets a solid performance from RGIII, you don't care as much about that in the 15th or 20th pick range.

I really struggle to see Finnegan outearning Carr.

They don't play bump and run but there's a big premium on tackling and not letting the guy get past you, both against WR adn on the outside against RB. Finnegan is a guy who put up 100 tackles in 2010 and seems to have a good number of them most years. Is the "Reputation" he has that makes people not want him based on anything other than that fight with Andre Johnson?

Sorta surprised that no one has really noted how well a physical, beat people up corner like Finnegan would fit into the Bears base defense package.

Technically the Bears don't have a bigger/faster TE in Davis since Davis is a free agent. The only TE the Bears currently have is Spaeth.

I think this would make perfect sense, but it's also plausible that some team would be willing to offer more money than the Bears would to grab 1 of those guys. With the O Line and WR vacancies, that's a worry.