balta1701-A

@AdamSchefter: Former Saints DT Sedrick Ellis has reached agreement on a one-year deal with the Chicago Bears.

Tavaris?

ESPN

You almost have to eventually, but then the quesiton is, what do you do to honor the guys like Urlacher who gave their careers to the team?

Would doing so require the Bears build a proper football stadium? because I'd be in just for that reason.

Question is, would anyone give up a 7th rounder for a guy who stank last year, has a knee problem, and is likely to be cut in the near future?

Some other team will always give a second chance to a first round pick.

Stealing this mini camp comment from ESPN:

If Carimi is cut...the Bears roster will not have a single first round pick from the Angelo-era on it.

Nothing new there.

Wasn't his biggest problem always supposed to be a very long, slow throwing motion? I'm not sure he's the kind of guy the Bears would want to target given their issues the last couple years and the system being put in place now.

Not just getting the ball out quicker...but I've been saying for a while, one of the hallmarks of the NOLA line is that the lineman against the opposing team's best rusher always had help.

If it isn't Bushrod then this offseason was a failure regardless of how good Bennett is.

Remember, there are lots of tiny exemptions in there for veterans on short term deals that allow them to sneak extra cap space, Emery was using a bunch of th ose.

All right, I don't like using admin threats on this board...but stop with the personal insults. That's about our biggest rule.

(Like 6 years ago the board decided that we should just leave all NFL related talk, Bears or not, in this forum because it's the only one most people came to use. The end result of that is several dozen posts on Tebow in the Bears forum every few months. Y'all may decide whether or not that's a sufficient sacrifice).

Minor league franchises in baseball do this all the time. It's free press. Googling the phrase "Minor league team gives away" is actually kinda fun.

I totally agree with this. If he'd spent the last year trying to turn himself into a tight end or a running back, he might well be an effective player.

Just to put numbers on it, Tebow 2011's completion percentage under 10 yards was 57%. For comparison, Cutler was at 68.5% under 10 yards in 2012. McCown is close to 68% career (had to go year by year manually).

He has trouble with accuracy on every pass.

I strongly disagree, and 3rd and 1 I want a guy in who can complete a pass if needbe.

Do you think that Tim Tebow can improve on his career 48% completion rating significantly? Just for comparison, McCown is at 58%.

I just wrote this rant over at ST and I'm going to share it here as a reply to you since you talk about him fitting the WCO or the Read Option. I hate when people say this. In this case not because of him personally, but because any sort of "gadget" setup will not work unless he can be a regular on the field in the first place. When a team does what the Jets did last year, try to use any player as a "Gadget" QB, 2 things happen. First, in order for him to come in, the QB has to come out. Like it or not, this step takes the offense out of rhythm. The playcalling is different, the cadence is different, everything changes. It may only be a psychological change, but the offense is told "This guy is in charge" and suddenly he's on the bench for a play or two. It's a giant disruption. Worse than that is what it does to the defense. Put yourself in the shoes of the middle linebacker. You see the QB come out and Tebow come on to the field. Do you think that a trick play might be coming? Do you not perk up rapidly and make sure everyone knows their assignments and how to deal with the upcoming trick play? The defense immediately snaps to attention, that's their natural response, they're coached to be ready for it. The Bears have seen this exact effect with the "Hester package", every time he comes on the field, the defense suddenly snaps to attention and expects something tricky. If you want a gadget player to be effective, he has to be a nearly every down player. He has to be able to have a role if the play isn't called for him, whether it's as a receiver or a blocker, a team has to run 10 plays with him in order to get the defense adapted to having him on the field before anything tricky is tried. Take a look at how the Read option teams do it; they run the read option like 10% of the time and a standard offense 80-90% of the time because they want it to cross up the defense. Or look at how the Packers use Cobb and the Vikings used Harvin whenever he was healthy; they may not be in on every play, and they are moved around a lot, but they're in on a lot of plays where the ball goes elsewhere. If Tebow was willing and able to play the role of a starting TE or FB, great, then he's a great "Gadget" player because you can keep him on the field and have him play a role during the other 90% of the called plays, and then on play 10 you can flip the ball to him and have him run a read option out of the backfield with the defense not knowing that things are coming. But, he's shown no willingness to switch positions and he's seemingly spent no time developing skills that could help him make that position change.

If this group doesn't produce this year, and the top 2 guys from last year (SMC and Jeffery) don't step up, these guys won't have very long of a leash. If those guys don't perform this year, then the last thing they have to try is switching QB's before the heat is seriously on Emery.

He wasn't, but he was the best deep/speed threat.