adam

Everything looks solid outside of the player trades beyond Fields. All the trades incur some dead money. For Whitehair and Jackson, the dead money is the same for a cut or a trade. No one is trading for Whitehair. For Jackson, the trading team would have a $12.5M cap hit. My assumption is Jackson is restructured or cut before free agency. Whitehair is almost a 100% guarantee cut candidate. Mooney is a FA, so he can't be traded.

I know there is a lot of concern about the Bears not having a 2nd round pick, but technically their #9 pick is their 2nd pick, just 23+ picks early (like a free trade up). If they go QB at #1, they have to go WR if Nabers or Odunze are on the board at #9. If not, I think you trade down with that pick. If they keep Fields and trade down from #1, then I would still apply the same theory. Get one WR, then consider trading down from #9 as well. So something like 1 to 3, then select MHJ, gain a 2nd, move from 9 to the teens and gain another 2nd rounder. That would be sweet. 4 picks in the top 60.

Here is the consensus Big Board where they take all the popular big boards and compile them into a consensus list: https://www.nflmockdraftdatabase.com/big-boards/2024/consensus-big-board-2024?pos=ALL Interesting that #1 is Williams and #9 is Odunze. This is not mock draft positions, but BPA rankings.

He flip flops like a salmon running. Kingsbury is not my top pick, but would definitely be higher with his knowledge of Williams' game. It is good to at least see the Bears not being cheap with this hire.

The good thing is this group is light years ahead of the one where they picked Getsy from. They learned their lesson.

Yes, they hit that with Thomas Brown and Marcus Brady.

Getsy wouldn't even be in the top 10 on this list lol.

My updated preference list: 1. Shane Waldron 2. Klint Kubiak — Tier Break — 3. Zac Robinson (McVay experience, former QB) 4. Kliff Kingsbury (move him to top tier if drafting Caleb) 5. Thomas Brown (OC experience, former RB) — Tier Break — 6. Marcus Brady (OC experience, former QB) 7. Liam Coen (former QB) 8. Greg Roman (move him to 2nd tier if keeping Fields) 9. Greg Olson

It could also be to get intel on Caleb. Now they are making teams really hedge their bets as you really don't know which way Poles is going to go.

And Kliff, now things are getting interesting: There would be negative zero chance that they hire him and NOT draft Caleb.

CTE candidate. Dude was a nobody, he had like 1 ok season playing his entire career with Brett Favre. That says a lot.

Also interviewing Zac Robinson, Passing Game Coordinator/QBs Coach for the Rams and Marcus Brady, he is currently on the Eagles staff and was the OC in Indy under Reich, worked with Flus.

Pretty much lol, recency bias at its finest.

It's a business. Very rarely do you have teammates that are together for more than 4-5 years anyway. I would say it is extremely rare to have teammates longer than that unless you join the team relatively at the same time, and both sign long term extensions.

They could be waiting on Kubiak, who has a game on Saturday night. If they beat GB, he is hired. If they lose to GB, the Bears go in a different direction, lol.

So Ryan Leaf reincarnated?

Here is a list of the OC candidates who have had interviews: 1. Shane Waldron - SEA OC (SEA beat DET this season) 2. Klint Kubiak - SF Passing Game Coordinator (SF lost to MIN and plays GB this weekend) 3. Thomas Brown - CAR OC (CAR basically lost to everone) ------------------------------------------------ 4. Liam Coen - Kentucky OC (Kentucky scored a lot of pts against good SEC teams) 5. Greg Roman - Ex-BAL OC (castoff, might be better for a lower position, like Run Game Coordinator) 6. Greg Olson - SEA QB Coach (SEA beat DET this season) I prefer one of the top 3.

Another one: McVay assistant before going to Carolina. Well regarded around the league, made Thielen into a 1K receiver at 33 yrs old, something he hadn't done since 2018.

Is it cockiness, arrogance, or selfishness?

The weirdest thing for me to see is the lack of touch. It seems like all he has is a fastball, which can work 60% of the time, but there are times where there needs to be some air underneath the ball, especially on some screen passes, and I have rarely seen him do that. That also makes for a much more catchable ball. He does have a changeup, but that is when he changes his arm angle, but that is still not really a touch pass.

This also can be a huge smoke screen. Obviously, if there is a trade announced before the draft, they are trading the pick. However, we won't know for sure if he is actually selecting a QB at #1 until the pick is in. So even if there are no pre-draft trades, there is nothing stopping a team on draft day from pulling the trigger on a trade. The suspense is going to crazy. Today is exactly 100 days until the NFL draft, they have a timer here: https://visitdetroit.com/2024nfldraft/ So yes, we may have to wait 100 days until we find out.

I am not a scout, so all I can do is go off what others are saying. When I read stuff like this, from analysts I believe are fairly consistent, it sort of makes it a no brainer: “I just think he’s a rare, rare talent and I can’t see the Chicago Bears bypassing that,” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said about Williams. "I don’t know what he’ll do, but I can tell you what other NFL teams believe he’ll do: trade Justin Fields and draft a quarterback at No. 1. This is as much a financial decision as it is a football decision". - Dane Brugler, The Athletic from last year's final mock: "I don’t know what the Panthers are going to do, but I can tell you what other teams believe the Panthers are going to do: draft Young." That to me seems very interesting. I know it means nothing, but the parallels are pretty crazy from this perspective. Brugler predicted the top 4 picks, including Richardson to Indy at #4. He also had Levis going to TEN at #11, but talked about the need to build their OLine. They actually picked Skoronski at #11 and Levis fell to them in the 2nd round. He had Joey Porter going to PIT at 17, he went there at 32. He had JSN going to SEA at 20, he did. Zay Flowers to BAL at 22, he did.

I need to look into how many teams selected a QB #1 when they were not the worst team in the league (either via trade like the Bears, or they traded up for the pick). CAR was 7-10 the year before they traded up for Bryce Young! ? LAR was 7-9 the year before trading up for Goff. ATL was 4-12 the year before trading up for Vick in 2001 draft. Those are the only 3 instances since 2000 where a team other than the worst team in the league was picking a QB at #1. The Bears would be the first team to gain the pick without having to trade up for it. Does anyone ever remember another case where a team acquired the #1 overall pick and didn't trade up for it?

Here are the first QBs taken when there is not one taken #1 overall (last 5): 2022 - Pickett 2017 - Trubisky 2014 - Bortles 2013 - Manuel 2008 - Ryan The last 4, yeesh. So like you said, when there is a consensus, the odds are better. I also looked back at a bunch of draft sites about the QB rankings from last year, it was about 50/50 Young and Stroud. Some other sites were even undecided and said it depended on what type of QB you were looking for. Every site was concerned about Young's size though, which is and was a huge red flag.

Pretty crazy to find someone do basically the same exact analysis and coming to essentially the same conclusions I did from a month agao. The highest success rate for QB is when selected #1. 70% of the #1 picks in the last 30 years hit 4K passing yards, had a playoff win, and Pro Bowl. The rest of the 1st rounders, the success rate drops to 25%-33%. So a team is 2-3 times more likely to find THE GUY #1 than he is any other pick in the 1st round. The numbers plummet even further after the 1st round. Guys like Brady and to an extent Purdy (if he keeps it up) are unicorns, and make 6th and 7th round picks have a 4% chance of hitting compared to 2%.