AZ54

This might be Pace's worst move... evah. I agree it's desperation to fix the TE spot. The salary is one thing but the guaranteed money bothers me. If this were a deal where we could bring him into camp and let him compete and if he's not worth $8mil let him go I could live with it. The only way this makes sense is if Burton is gone because then we must have someone with experience to fill that U TE role. A rookie will never fill that slot in year 1. We can't pay $14mil to two broken down TEs. I assume Burton's rehab is not going well and the team has concerns he'll never return to form. I expect Burton to get cut in the near future, or maybe as I think Adam has been saying if cut after Jun 1st we take minimal cap hit this year. Now draft Claypool to groom for the role behind Graham for a season. I have no idea if Graham is a good locker room guy who helps coach the younger players but that's a must have on this team. I have to think it was part of Pace's decision.

Saving money for Watson's deal. He's going to learn quickly what Hopkins meant for him.

NOt sure I'm buying the Bridgewater news either. Might be an agent spouting off to generate some action around the league. With Teddy we'd have to build a strong running game behind a good Oline because he can't run. I still think we wait out the QB market a bit and take what's left in Rd 2 of FA.

More or less the same deal Trevathan got. Tells me the Bears valued Danny more than Kwit and might have been happy to keep Kwit if they could save some money. They couldn't so they took the better player.

FWIW Spotrac has Trubisky's value listed at $27.8mil/yr.

Spotrac says we have $21mil. Overthecap says $8mil but they tend to be slower with updates. Neither site is accurate as OTC shows Kyle Long still on the books, Spotrac has Eddie Jackson for $1mil/yr. Hopefully tomorrow we'll figure it out but FA begins in earnest at noon.

I like your plan of attack for the draft.

Insane for a guy who only threw what 15 and then 14 passes in back to back playoff wins.

It was great for us that we had two good options in front of us. That doesn't happen too often. Best of luck to Kwit, he will end up somewhere and hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of his coverage issues if we see him again.

Do you really think he'll be gone by either of our 2nd Rd picks? I doubt it especially with all the talent in this years draft. In this draft we have two athletic talents at safety including Jeremy Chinn, who is 6'3" and 221lbs. Both these players are similar but the lack of competition for Dugger has to be a concern for his transition to the NFL. I believe both will end up having good careers and may end up as starters down the road but that won't happen in 2020. Dugger adds return ability too but still IMO there are better football players in Rd 2 than either of these safeties. These are the type of players we should look at if we trade back.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001106246/article/nfl-player-vote-ratifies-new-cba-through-2030-season It's going to increase the salary cap but we also add 2 players to the roster....55 now which I think is good. I don't know if they will increase the game day roster because that's something else I'd like to see since we are moving to a 17 game schedule. Anything we can do to reduce snap count for players during a long season is a good thing IMO. Plus it would make it easier to get a backup OG some game time snaps when a game is in control in the 4th quarter. With such a limited active roster teams usually only have two backup Oline active on game day. Cap goes up to $198mil. The minimum salaries go up a lot and I think that's a good too along with better benefits for retired players. Now we have football setup for the next 11 years. With this stability the next big thing we'll likely see is figuring out how/where to have an international team. Since it's the offseason....that travel will get a lot easier in about 5 years and it won't cost much more than today's sub-sonic airline tickets. https://boomsupersonic.com/overture

Any credibility for that site went out the window when I saw the next article below this one saying Chicago is the ideal place for washed-up TE JImmy Graham.

That 2nd Rd pick won't happen. This does allow Pace to lock him down and hopefully offer him a short term deal 2-3yr range with a little more guaranteed money (maybe $6mil) but still letting him hit FA when he's young enough to hit a bigger contract if he plays well. The $21mil was more than I expected too but after hearing how much cap space was going up with the new CBA deal all salaries are going to go up. $200mil cap means teams can spend an average of $3.7mil per player. Is Trevathan worth 2x an average player? I'd say so for now. That might change in the last year of the deal. Is this deal a sign players and teams are expecting the CBA to pass? In this case I think it's in both player and team's interest to get a deal done early so not likely. ARob hasn't even begun to negotiate as his agent waits on the new CBA decision.

Very interesting. I assume Kwit is gone and we re-sign KPL as the primary backup. I also hope this is a team friendly deal in the sense the last year of the deal is probably a team option meaning little cap hit if we cut him. https://bearswire.usatoday.com/2020/03/12/bears-sign-danny-trevathan-to-three-year-extension/

I like Vonn Bell or Karl Joseph. Either fits what we need. Bell might not be the most athletic safety but he has good leadership on the field. I think he'd be a good fit in our locker room.

I agree on our FAs except he might let Kwit test the market with intent to match

I disagree because while early on there is a feeding frenzy for the top FAs the teams that are focused on getting one or even two of them typically has to focus a lot of energy negotiating those deals. If you remove yourself from the top tier noise then you can quickly and quietly focus on the 2nd tier FAs. The only issue with that is then you are setting the market for those FAs instead of letting prices settle down a bit. Still if that's your best shot and you really want a mid-level guy like Halapoulicaati Vaitai OT (had to copy/paste that) then just go get him and don't wait for the competition to show up later. He still makes our team better but that's not hard to do when Leno was the starting LT last year. That contract for Vaitai is likely going to be higher than the proposed 3/$24 deal simply because FAs usually earn more than we expect, or maybe he gets a surprising amount of guaranteed money on it. That will be true with the new CBA deal likely getting approved before FA. I say likely because as Sam Acho explained it, about 68% of the players will get 20% pay raises. The elite 10-15% players who might make hte news with their comments they just don't have as much say in the situation. Those in the middle will likely depend on where they are at in their career. If you are close the end of your career (i.e. Trevathan) but likely have enough to get one more decent contract do you want to go into this season with labor uncertainty to the point teams will prefer 1yr deal for you? Do you want to risk a lockout next season and give up millions? For NFL players it's vastly different than how the rest of us view our career. If I were a bottom-50%-of-the-roster player nothing Aaron Rodgers complains about regarding money matters to me if I know I a yes vote gets me a 20% raise the next 1-3 years. Also, more games equals more opportunity for the bottom of the roster players, which oculd lead to a decent deal with some guaranteed money. We'll have more playoff teams as well and that too is another paycheck. Just looking at the Bears' roster I see just 14 players earning more than $2mil. Obviously we'll add a few more soon but still we may lose one or two as well.

With this draft I'm not interested in spending much on a FA plus nobody is really appealing. Travis Austin is too old and never had decent long speed, his game relied on his short area quickness. Perriman never could run routes well. Paul Richardson has had a lot of injuries lately making him a big risk. He's available now since he was released and still teams aren't knocking down the door to sign him. I'm sure part of that has to do with the deep WR class. Marcus Johnson...why would the Colts with $86mil of cap space let even a moderately good WR leave when they need to entice a good FA QB to join their roster? His best year includes 17 receptions.

For some reason I cannot vote but among the options I choose C. However, I'm not opposed to going all in on Trubisky this year and signing some low rent backup QB. If he fails then it only helps us find a QB next year. Signing Keenum or Dalton doesn't really give us a bright future...unless you truly believe one of them could win the Superbowl with our defense. I don't think that can happen unless the D hits elite '85 Bears level. The "legit" backup QB seems like a lot money tossed into a pot hoping it saves Pace's job because that QB is likely good enough to get us into the playoffs with our defense. From there he'd be hoping to do the KC thing when they drafted Mahomes and trade up from pick #25ish for the next QB around pick #10 sometime in the next two seasons.

If Eli watches our Oline protect Trubisky would he still have dinner with Pace?

Zero chance of that happening. Exactly what purpose would Eli serve on our roster?

Zero chance Josh Rosen is an Acura NSX. Say whatever you want about that car it has elite performance, Rosen never has had that. He is more like a Genesis Coupe. Looks better than it is from the outside, but disappointing when driving it.

Ben Roethlisberger

There are a lot of good options almost anyway the board falls.

Looking at this revised big board by Matt Miller I would gladly trade back both of our 2nd Rd picks or one to get 4 picks in top 100. I could be very happy with various combinations of players available between 50 and 100. Say Cleveland wants to get another early 2nd Rd pick at 43 (470pts) and gives us both of their 3rd Rd picks (220/140pts) plus their 4th Rd pick (70pts). We then have 50, 74, 90, and 112 plus our own 4th Rd pick at 144. Then HOU trades with us for 50 giving us 58 and 101. It's a bit in our favor but if they don't give 101 they could give 108. Now we have 58, 74, 90, 101, 112, 144 and further down we still have 163, 196, 200, 233. From there rather than bringing in 10 rookies Pace can start trading back up to grab the players he wants. He can give up 1,2, or 3 late picks to get back into the top 100 depending how far he wants to move up. If we stayed at these picks I would draft: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2877898-2020-nfl-draft-big-board-matt-millers-top-players-at-start-of-scouting-combine#slide1 58: Julian Okwara OLB 74: Denzel Mims WR (assume he drops a bit due to WR saturation...teams have already drafted for that position) 90: Lloyd Cushenberry IOL 101: Chase Claypool TE (I'm still putting him at the U position to replace Burton) 112: AJ Dillon RB (at 245lbs runs a 4.53 with a 41" vert) switched to Draftek for board rankings here.