bradjock

If Brendon Ayanbadejo leaves as he is expected to, then Adrian Peterson becomes the #1 guy on special teams. Not to mention, he was the #1 Rb last season. Either way, the Bears would be flat out crazy to release Peterson. He's a great player and he's cheap as hell. Considering we have major needs at O-line, RB, WR, safety, LB, and O-line, I believe that drafting a rb would not be a top priority when there are so many good ones available fairly cheap.

I've tried staying up before and you never hear anything until the next morning. There's no reason for teams to announce it immediately since it implies tamporing. That's why I'm going to sleep.

I judge a truly great player by their "Wow" moments. Both times we played the Giants the past two years Berrian has made a spectacular catch that made me say "Wow." He's proven he genuinely does have that big play ability. Berrian with that "Wow" catch versus New Orleans in the NFC championship game. Unbelievable. Heck, his rookie year versus Detroit when the official announced, "The ball moved when he hit the ground" and he was in the damn end-zone!!! That was a "Wow" moment. Yes I'm pissed Berrian dropped the ball versus Dallas this year. But don't discount what Berrian has done or how easily he can be replaced. We signed Moose to a huge deal and the only wow moment I remember is, "I can't believe he dropped it." That's in three years!!! Briggs has never given me a "Wow" moment. Urlacher has. That's why I'd much rather lose Briggs then Berrian.

In 2005 Seattle gave us a 6th round pick for Mike Green. He'd been benched in favor of Brandon McGowan and damn near everyone else. Most GM's view those late round picks as "garbage" picks and don't mind giving them away. Especially since Griese's contract is extremely reasonable. Considering Griese is a helluva a lot better then Tavaris Jackson, if I'm a team like Minnesota or any team struggling for a QB, I'd be happy as hell to give up a #6 pick for him.

I'll be honest. I haven't seen much of Turner or Jones. Is Turner REALLY that great or is he more of a fluke who is thriving in a great system??? Heck, if we sign Turner, I'll literally do cartwheels for joy, the way I did when we signed Moose. Look at what Minnesota became after they drafted Adrian Peterson. Heck, and we already have Hester running the deep routes. That's an outstanding one-two punch. The kicker is, what we do with Turner likely depends on what happens with Briggs & Berrian. If they both walk, we'll be more likely to make a move IMO. Which means the odds of us going nuts for the #1 rb in FA seem slim to none damnit. So I'm going to assume we'll go for the "next best thing" and sign a guy like Julius Jones for a fraction of the cost.

You mention that if Berrian goes, make a move for Bryant Johnson, but are you sure he'll be that much cheaper? Johnson is viewed as the 3rd best WR available. The thing is, Minnesota & Tennessee are both far more desperate for receiver help then the Bears are and both have more available cap room. If you doubt they're more desperate, neither one of them has Devin Hester, and I'd take Mark Bradley over any receiver either of those teams have. I have a sick feeling we'll be entering camp with Hester, Bradley, Rashied Davis, and whoever we draft. I hope I'm wrong about that.

It had to be pretty damn big for him to sign the day free agency starts. Jones must have panicked a bit. My guess is he signed a 60 million deal with 20 million guaranteed. That's what Faneca should get, and Adams is a LT.

I like the quote from the article that says, "It was thought that Olivea, who lost his starting job at right tackle midseason and fell out of favor with the coaching staff over his work ethic and commitment, would be given another year to get back in the good standing and perhaps earn back his job." How could anybody think that could be a star??? Seriously. At best we'd sign him hoping he could become John St. Clair. He's a Right Tackle and we need a right tackle, so if we signed him I wouldn't complain. But expecting him to be anything more then a guy who was bad enough to get flat-out dumped is ridiculous.

I agree completely. We need a damn good runningback. But is is Turner a damn good running back though??? Seriously. The guy has never been a load back, he's never been a #1, and he looked great filling in for arguably the best player in the game. Don't forget Cedric Benson looked damn good at times stepping in for Thomas Jones. It's a helluva a thing when you pay a guy huge bank & they don't produce. PFT is predicting Turner will get 12.5 million guaranteed, so he'll probably sign a deal for close to 40 million. I'm honestly not a Julius Jones fan, but he wouldn't cost nearly as much. More like 5 guaranteed for 15 over 3 years. Chris Brown & Derrick Ward are also thoughts, but I'm not sure if they're that much better then Adrian Peterson. The best thought is draft a rookie, but christ almighty we've been down that road 2 of the last 3 years. Either way, it doesn't sound like we're interested in Turner so it's probably a moot point.

I'd like to see Turner here, but PFT has projected that he'll earn 12.5 million in guaranteed money alone. Meanwhile they projected that Julius Jones will earn 4.5 million in guaranteed money, comparable to the 3 year deal Justin Fargas signed. The fact is Turner's been a good back-up & has never been an every down back. It's tough to justify paying him that much money on potential. Julius Jones is not great, but he'll be one helluva a lot cheaper and he'd immediately be the #1 RB on this team.

Just pointing out that there's one more bad WR who's hit the market the Bears might be interested in after some team over-pays for Bernard Berrian. According to PFT, Washington paid 10 million AND gave up a 3rd & 4th round draft pick for Lloyd's services. As PFT wrote, "For that investment, the Redskins got 23 catches for 365 yards in 2006 and two catches for 14 yards in 2007. He never caught a touchdown pass as a Redskin." He was in that massive free agent group Redskins fans were so proud of that included Antwaan Randle-El and Adam Archuletta. Gentlemen, that is exactly why you shouldn't get pissed when the Bears don't go broke trying to get a guy.

Call me out damnit!!! This new site has been too damn quiet! (You are the Jason who was formerly from Tennessee who moved too . . . I forget where.) I generally don't bitch about how much NFL players get paid. Only when it comes to the cap & how it hurts the team. If you can get paid, do it. But you do have to appreciate the fact that NFL guys make the majority of their money in the early part of the years, and the rest of their lives for most of these guys is basically downhill. Jason, you mention you could turn that money into a fortune now, but could you have done that when you were Orton's age (25)? Christ almighty, I'd have pissed that away on strippers & Hot Pockets faster than anything when I was his age. As for Orton getting paid, I just appreciate guys who appreciate the chance to make more money. They don't bitch & piss and moan about how unfairly they are being treated and how they never want to play for Chicago again. (Unlike Lance Briggs). They don't collect a ton of dough & say they have to worry about their future (Cedric). I feel like he'll try his best & do his best. If it works out for him, it works out for the Bears. On a side note, wouldn't it suck to have to find a new career after leaving the NFL??? Although used car salesmen are always in demand. That's why this money is so damn important.

Horrid is too harsh. You were saying the EXACT same things about Peanut Tillman not that long ago. The tough part about being at that position is that you only make the high-light reels for being on a great play or terrible play. Not much in-between. Right now Manning is a mediocre to average FS. He has the speed & a great jump but he's terrible at reading defenses and the quarterback. This would go back to the notion that he's not that damn smart, which is why he flunked out of Nebraska . . . it might have been Oklahoma. Either way, how damn stupid are you for that too happen??? Manning has blazing speed, and for whatever reason, when Mike Brown is on the field he looks much better. As for the "missed strip," before that happened Babbich huddled up the defense and yelled, "Get the ball! Get the ball!" Horrible mistake on Manning's part, but you can't hold a grudge against a guy for too long for doing what he was told.

Yes!!! If some team is that freaking stupid to take Williamson, there's hope we can dump Benson!!! Jerry Angelo: "I will trade you Cedric Benson for your 7th round pick in the 2015 draft . . . I'll even throw in Archuletta as a "sweetner"!" In the last two seasons Williamson scored one freaking touchdown. That was against the damn Bears in a game we should have won. Ironically enough, I think Archuletta had the coverage on him.

There's a ton of love for Faneca but I've heard little about Flozell Adams. The guy is a pro-bowl LT. The fact that he turns 33 in May is a major problem, but you hope to get 3 years out of a guy like that. Let Tait move back to the RT position, I'll be honest, I haven't been a big fan of signing a guy, especially since he'll cost an arm and a leg. But I was sitting here trying to think what we could do that would allow us to draft Mendenhall. There are damn few tackles available in FA, and Adams is the only one who is any good. IMO, if we don't sign Adams (assuming no other good tackle becomes available, and they usually don't) we pretty much HAVE to draft an offensive tackle with our #14 pick. We'll be able to sign a free agent guard, but there's no other tackles. If we have to start the season with Terrance Metcalf as our back up Tackle I might have to start sending bomb threats to Halas Hall.

Colvin went out for the season during week 12 last year. But before that he played in every consecutive game for 3 years straight. So other then the initial year he signed with New England, injuries haven't been a problem. That being said, Colvin turns 31 in September. Personally, I'd like to find out what Jamar Williams & Michael Okwo can do. Both those guys should be ready to be major contributors this year.

Zach Zaidman on the SCORE said something interesting tonight when talking about the defense. I'm paraphrasing, but he said, "A major problem with the defense, the way I saw it being in the locker room, there were far too many "Me's" and not enough team guys. Too many guys were worried about putting up big stats so they could get paid. There was the hang-over from the Super Bowl and other guys had just gotten paid." I thought this was interesting as hell. Previously we've just assumed the defensive woes were a combination of injuries, having a new OC, and playing a more difficult schedule. This sounds like there are more chemistry issues and conflict within the team. Zaidman did not elaborate as to what he meant about this so you can interpret it to mean whatever you want.

Agreed. The most terrifying part is, if you draft a QB in round one and maybe even round 2, you're going to have to find out what that guy can do on the field, no matter how bad they suck (see Benson, Cedric). If that's the case, you can count on possibly having the #1 draft pick, and you don't want to take a QB cause the guy you already have sucks. I'd be happy as hell rolling the dice with the best QB available in round 3. Hell, Andre Woodsen could drop there. I'm not a big Woodsen fan, but it's amazing that a month ago several mocks had us taking him. Draft a QB in round 3 and it's ok to make him a back-up. Any earlier and the expectations are too damn high. I'm not ready to go into rebuilding mode yet.

First and foremost, I hope we resign Briggs. That being said, I think we owe it to ourselves and to the guys we've drafted to find out what they can do. Jamar Williams has looked good in limited time. We drafted Michael Okwo in the 3rd round, and considering his injury wasn't that bad to begin with, he ought to be ripped and ready to go. In terms of upgrading a position, linebacker is WAY down on the list, even if Briggs leaves. If we can do that while addressing OT, OG, RB, WR, QB, and SS, then I'll be happy.

Huh??? Jason McKie might has started every game for the past two seasons. More importantly, you think our run-game sucks partly because of McKie??? If that's the case, why didn't our run-game suck in 2006? I think you're saying that we need a big smash-mouth FB for running situations. A lot of times we use John Gilmore for that, which is why I'm hoping we resign him. Ron Turner loves the more "finesse" type fullbacks who can catch the ball. You mention Runnels, but the knock on him is that he's a good receiver, but a terrible blocker. Either way he's not going to fix the problem. Considering we just resigned Dez Clark, we're going to see a lot more two TE sets and a lot less of Jason McKie or any fullback.

Good for the Bears. I'm skeptical if he'll ever be a quality starter, but he's at the very least a good #2. Also good for Orton. When I first heard yesterday we might resign him, my initial thought was, "Why the hell wouldn't he want to try and get paid somewhere else." Then I saw he's only due to make $466,000 or something like that this season. Sure it's a ton of money to me, but these NFL guys have to worry about setting a ton of money aside for their future. I'd speculate he'll make over a million each of the next two years with the Bears. Hell, lets hope he wins the QB job this year and next year at this time we're worried about him becoming a FA in 2010.

That 40 time ends all speculation that Mcfadden might possibly be around when the Bears draft at #14.

Not to mention, according to that article he has one interception in 32 games. Manning has 4 interceptions in two years. The main difference is that Huff plays strong safety.

My guess is that we're trying to compensate for having a horrible receiver group by having a great tandem of TE's. Either way, his deal couldn't have been for very much. If we resigned our top quarterback (arguably) for 3 million per year, how much could we have given our 2nd best TE (arguably.)

I should have clarified: There are no safeties in free agency who are an upgrade over the guys we have. Mike Brown is a pro-bowler when healthy, and Danieal Manning easily falls into the "solid" category. The thing is, the cover 2 we run puts so much emphasis on safety play, that they need to be top tier. None of the guys you mentioned are an upgrade. Are you sure Atari Bigby is a free agent?