adam

I agree, and with the aging core, someone will be a scapegoat.

Pretty wild that they fired Stefanski who groomed a 5th rounder into a Pro Bowler.

Not so fast, it looks like Baltimore has reached out for their OC position. I don't know if Doyle is a good fit there with a vet QB, and older skill position players in Andrews, Hopkins, and Henry.

Looks like Nahshon Wright made the PB as an alternate. Don't know how much that impacts contract negotiations, but it usually does.

He is a UFA, so GB can still resign him, but he was playing on a rookie deal as a 7th rounder and now will command at least $10-15M on the open market. At his age, 25, I am sure his agent will be looking for the higher end of that range, if not more as the LT market is pretty weak this year. GB is currently $10M over the cap.

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