adam

Due to Maye making the Super Bowl and Allen and others out due to injury, somehow the alternate selection passed up guys like Trevor Lawrence for Shedeur Sanders. Just when you think the award could not get any more ridiculous, they set a new low. At this point, it should not be used as any type of honor.

I guess all I am saying is a lot of Maye's numbers are inflated and somewhat artificial in nature. The Pats had one of the easiest schedules in NFL history followed by the easiest path to the Super Bowl in quite some time. Maye's offense scored 16 points and won by double digits. They also won a game where they scored 10 pts. They didn't hit 250 yards of total offense in the last 2 games, and won both. The Bears had over 415 yards in both of their playoff games and split them.

I am sticking with Caleb as well. Maye is already near his ceiling. He had a 72% Comp this year. Rarely, if ever, does a QB maintain that high of a Comp% YoY. In reality, most drop over 5%. So if his Comp% drops to 66% next year, that's roughly 30 completions, 400 yards, and 2-3 fewer TDs. Still a great season, but he is still primed to regress from his 2025 campaign.

I was wrong, Maye is in a category with Jim Plunkett, as the only QBs in NFL history to win 3 playoff games with under 600 Passing Yards, multiple INTs, and 10+ sacks in NFL history. So it has not been just one game, it has been the entire playoffs. Maye is the only QB in NFL history to be sacked 15 times over a 3-game span and win every game.

Maye is currently in a class with only Trent Dilfer as the worst playoff performance by a QB to reach the Super Bowl in NFL history. If Williams played this bad and the Bears made the Super Bowl, that would be the only discussion for 2 weeks.

Pretty big news, I like the continuity for Year 2 for the new offense.

Just curious, you would you rather have Pick #25 with a 5th year option, or a 2nd (#40) and a 3rd (#72) for 4 years? I feel like in order to get true impact players, most of the time they are first rounders, and it feels like the Bears need more of those type of players to upgrade existing positions where there are average players. On the flip side, how big of a difference is it from #25 to #40?

Yeah that was a good thing, but I feel like he will end up there eventually as a former player. Once we get thru Year 2 with the same core, I will feel pretty confident regardless of which coaches and players leave. Right now the team is still ascending, so continuity is very important. It will be interesting to see if his presence has an impact on the free agent signings like Wright and CJGJ?

Teams have exclusive rights until the start of the new league year. So basically the Bears would have exclusive rights to their FAs thru March 10th, then the legal tampering period opens, so it becomes fair game.

No problemo, I will try to do some deep dives going into next season.

With our current defense, we blow both of these AFC teams out by at least 20 pts. This is some of the worst football I have seen in a long time, and it is a Conference Championship. Obviously, DEN didn't have Nix, but Payton not taking points early was the difference. The Pats are going to win with Maye having 86 yards passing. They have now had one of the top 10 easiest schedules in NFL history, then got LAC, HOU, and DEN w/ a backup QB. Wild really.

Watching the NE vs DEN game, holy hell those teams look like crap. Maye has 55 yards passing thru 3 quarters and 3 sacks. Whoever wins the NFC will crush either of these teams. So many what ifs for the Bears. They had a legit shot if they beat LA.

Next up is the East-West Shrine and Senior Bowls. Just over 6 weeks until Free Agency opens and under 3 months until the draft. January 27th - East-West Shrine Bowl January 31st - Senior Bowl February 17th-March 3rd - Franchise Tag Window February 23rd-March 2nd - NFL Combine March 9th-11th - Legal Tampering Period March 11th - Free Agency Officially Opens April 20th - Clubs with returning head coaches can begin offseason workout programs April 23rd-25th - NFL Draft May 1st - Designate 5th-year options from 2023 Draft (Wright) May 1st or 8th - Rookie Minicamp

Detroit hires Petzing as their OC and GB hires Gannon as their DC. ARZ's defense was one of the worst in the NFL over the last 3 years finishing 29th, 15th, and 31st in pts while the offense was not much better finishing 23rd, 12th, and 24th. Considering GB is going from Hafley to Gannon; that is a huge downgrade in coaching. Gannon benefitted from a stacked roster in PHI which he will not have in GB, nor did he have in ARZ. DET let go their OC that had the 4th highest scoring offense for one that had the 23rd. Are they going to have Petzing use their current offensive scheme or will they change to his? Either way that is a downgrade. Now the last domino is hopefully Flores. MIN did extend him as their DC, but there are still HC vacancies left. I don't know if he announced that he would not take any of those jobs but BUF, LVR, ARZ, and CLE are still open.

Outside of the division, the Bears top QBs they will face will be: Allen, Maye, and Lawrence with 2 of those games at home. I kinda like that. Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Mayfield Philadelphia Eagles - Hurts Jacksonville Jaguars - Lawrence New York Jets - Rookie? New England Patriots - Maye New Orleans Saints - Shough Buffalo Bills - Allen Miami Dolphins - Tua? Atlanta Falcons - Penix/Cousins? Carolina Panthers - Young Seattle Seahawks - Darnold

Looking at this again with some of the playoffs complete, the biggest challenges will be SEA and NE, and BUF in BUF. JAX in CHI will be a solid matchup. If you consider SEA, NE, JAX, BUF, and PHI as top 10 teams, that is 5 games against top 10 teams, 6 divisional games (always tough), 4 meh teams, and 2 bad teams. So 5, 6, 6, is a pretty even distribution. I just hope they get a later bye.

Anything is possible. DJ would have to agree to it. I agree on the WR part for KC, especially considering Kelce's retirement. Kmet an option? Moore is the perfect WR for a bad team with a young QB, like TEN or LVR.

I am sure Saleh will bring in McDaniel as his OC, forming SF-Central. Makes too much sense. I bet that is what landed him the job over Nagy. Nagy has struggled to bring in other coaches. Fangio was already on the staff when Nagy took over, he then hired Pagano, then Desai. In Nagy's coaching tenure, the team never had the same OC/DC combo in back-to-back years: Helfrich/Fangio Helfrich/Pagano Lazor/Pagano Lazor/Desai

Not if they trade for Moore, they take on his cap hit, which would be $16.5M for them, which means they would swap Moore and Jones and be worse off than they are now. A cut or trade accelerates cap hits, while restructures lessens them pushing money into the future like you said. KC is only in a bind for 2026, so they can safely move $20-30M to 2027 with limited impact. They have to free up $62M or $70M in effective cap, that is almost 25% of the total cap. They can add also void years to help offset the spread of the bonuses. So Jones has a $44.8M cap hit this year with $35M in guarantees. Since the money is guaranteeed, they will have to pay it one way or another. So they can convert it all to a bonus which gets spread out over the remainder of his deal, 3 years. That would reduce his 2026 cap hit to around $30M (saving $15M). However, if they need even more relief than that, they can add a year or two in void years to thin out that bonus money over 5 years instead of 3, which would give him a cap hit of $26M for 2026, saving about $19M.

KC's cap is screwed. I don't think they can trade Jones because him and Mahomes are basically the only two players that you can get cap relief from with a restructure. If they trade him, they immediately get a $30M dead money cap hit, which doesn't really help their situation. I have seen Simmons mentioned from TEN, but TEN has the most cap space, so moving him doesn't make much sense if it is strictly for cap purposes. There are several teams that fit the criteria who are in the need of cap relief and trading a player would provide that: Vikings, Cowboys, and Dolphins

Don't really want to talk what-ifs or beat a dead horse, but this was 100% on DJ. He ran his route about 10 yards too vertical. If he runs the right route, it hit him in the hands at the 25 with no defender within 5 yards of him. This guy breaks it down perfectly. What it seems like to me is because DJ didn't get the ball on previous times this play was called, that he didn't think it was coming to him so he was just jogging it out.

Trades are definitely better. Here are the top FA Edge options: Adafe Oweh - 28, 7.5 sacks, 48.7% of snaps Trey Hendrickson - 32, 4 sacks, 26% of snaps Khalil Mack - 35, 5.5 sacks, 41.7% of snaps Joey Bosa - 31, 5 sacks, 57.2% of snaps Jacob Martin - 31, 5.5 sacks, 61.5% of snaps Jihad Ward - 32, 5 sacks, 66.7% of snaps Jaelan Phillips - 27, 5 sacks, 74.5% of snaps

Ultimately if they can bring back Byard, the only starting positions they would have to fill besides SS would be any holes they make, like cutting Edmunds. That is a pretty good spot because you are looking to just upgrade at that point. A lot of teams are losing as much as they are gaining. 10 teams will have new coaches, 10 teams had 6 wins or less. Thats a 1/3 of the league, another 1/3 is trapped in the middle between 7-9 wins, then you have the 1/3. The Bears are primed for a top 1/3 run for the next decade. SEA, NE, CHI, JAX, DEN, and LAC seem to be that group. They all have QBs under 30, all made the playoffs, all will have relatively the same coaching staff in 2026, with no major cap issues.

For positional value, the Bears need an immediate starter at #25, that seems like DT or S, but could also be CB, LB, or Edge with a Wild Card being OT.

The Bears are about $4M over the cap, need $5M for operating space and $8-10M for draft picks. Let's just say that is $20M. The Bears can gain over $35M in cap space with these 3 transactions: 1. Cut Edmunds - pre-June 1st, save $15M (only $2.4M Dead cap) 2. Trade Moore - pre-June 1st, save $16.5M ($12M in Dead cap) or restructure that can save approximately $15M. 3. Restructure Thuney - convert $12M of his $16M to bonus, saves $6M Other potential moves 1. Cut/Trade/Restructure/Extend Kmet - I think they will do something with him. He is tied for the 7th-highest AAV amongst TEs for backup TE production. With the emergence of Loveland, you just can't have Kmet on the roster with an $11.6M cap hit. Options: A. Cut/Trade - save $8.4M, only $3.2M in dead money B. Restructure - With 2 years left, you can convert some of his $8.9M into a bonus to free up some cash this year C. Extend - Only if he takes less AAV, which may be unlikely, but if he did, you could cost-average his annual cap hit down to a more workable level. 2. Restructure Jarrett - similar to Thuney, can convert guaranteed to bonus to free up about another $5M If you add transactions for Kmet and Jarrett, the Bears could have close to $50M to work with. If Byard is your only named resigning, after subtracting operating space and the draft pool, the Bears should have $25-30M for free agency. Rest of the NFL To put this into perspective, the Chiefs are $62M over the cap, Vikings $49M, and Cowboys $39M. Mahomes has a $78M cap hit in 2026. They will probably restructure Mahomes and Jones to free up about $50M, mortgaging the future, and will probably have to cut or trade a guy like Jawaan Taylor to get under the cap. The Vikings will restructure Jefferson's contract, but they will have to make some cuts to just get under the cap. They won't be able to sign any major FAs. This roster looks to take a step back from 2025 unless all their draft picks hit and contribute on Day 1, unlikely. GB interestingly enough is $24M over the cap, they can get under with restructures for Love and Parsons, but man are those contracts gonna hit hard in a few years, Love's already hits $75M in 2028 and Parsons hits $72M in 2029. So if they restructure either of theirs this offseason, those numbers will go up even further. GB was clearly going all in and it looks like 2026 will be their last year with a roster that resembles 2025. 2027 and beyond will have to be stripped down. Quay Walker, Doubs, and their LT Walker are all UFAs this offseason, and they don't have a first-round pick. With limited cap and draft capital, this team is solely relying on Parsons in 2026. The Lions are $16M over, Goff has a $69M cap hit and St. Brown is $33M, they restructure both of those to get under. They can do the same with Hutchinson, to free up some operating space, but they won't be signing any major FAs. This team will go into 2026 relying on the 4th place schedule. The Bears are in the best shape cap-wise of all the teams in the Division, MIN has the most draft capital with an extra 3rd, GB has the least without a 1st round pick. The CHI, GB, and DET QB situation is stable, so the Bears are the healthiest of the teams within the division. CAP: CHI, ........DET, GB, .................MIN Draft: MIN, DET, CHI, ......................GB QB: CHI,.....DET, GB.........................MIN Overall Organizational Health: CHI, DET...........MIN, GB