I expect Poles to do some minor restructuring to give him some additional flexibility in his first year as GM. There are several contracts that he can modify without putting too much money into future years.

There are some big ones, but I think only one or two will be considered. Mack, Quinn, Whitehair, and Edwards can all safely be restructured to gain around $10M to this year's cap without putting more than $4-5M on any future cap year, if they need to. Jackson is another candidate if they believe he is a long term answer at FS. 

The Bears are actually in decent cap shape, and will continually get better year over year as some of the albatross contracts drop off. Next season, the only contracts of concern will be Mack, Quinn, and Jackson, but all of them have an out. Knowing what those outs are, the Bears may NOT want to restructure and kick more dead money into those years. So Whitehair and Edwards make logical targets based on their salaries to gain $2-3M on this year's cap.

Here are the outs for Mack, Quinn, and Jackson for next offseason:

2023 Pre-June 1st Cut/Post-June 1st Trade:

Mack- $16.9M in CS/$11.6M in DM - So is Mack work $28.5M or can the Bears sign $16.9M worth of players that would have more of an impact? A trade seems like the most likely route (potentially in season?) if anything happens, to gain some draft capital. Otherwise, a straight cut nets you nothing other than some cap space. They may ride with Mack for 2 more years.

Quinn- $9.7M in CS/$8.4 in DM - Quinn will cost $18.2M next year and combined with Mack cost $47M against the cap. I don't see that happening, and I think Quinn would be the easier one to move based on his contract. That is my guess.

2023 Post-June 1st Cut:

Jackson- $13.1M in CS/$3.9M in DM - I don't like splitting the dead money over two years because you move half of it into the next cap and cant use any cap savings in the main free-agent period), but in this case, it may be worth it. One interesting note, the Bears could do a post-June 1st cut any year, then carry over the difference in cap space to the next season to negate the dead money.  So if they really didn't want someone on their roster, and the cap savings was equal to the dead money, they could cut the player, incur half the dead money this year, retain enough cap savings to then negate the dead money on next season's cap. This scenario really opens up a lot of options because you really aren't hitting next year's cap as bad as originally thought (as long as you have carryover). So even with Jackson, just say the Bears cut sling after 2022, but then designate him a post-June 1st cut next offseason. They would take on $3.9M in 2023, but could also gain back $13.1M from what his contract was going to pay him. Now just say they use some of that, but carry over $10M to the 2024 cap. The savings would negate the dead cap and they would actually have $6.1M more cap space in 2024 (not necessarily $3.9M less). 

Goldman and Cohen would be prime candidates for something like that this year. Instead of trying to make more cap for this season, do post-June 1st cuts on one or both, then carry over most of the cap savings from this year to next year, negating the dead money and increasing the cap next season. 

Whitehair's contract is getting way above his performance and is not sustainable beyond this season.  He's not worth a $14mil cap hit in 2023.   

I think any contending team that needs a pass rusher will go through FAgeny and then the draft before they trade for an older expensive option to them. If a trades happens it will be during training camp not in free agency. Maybe someone gets injured  or .didn't work out. I think its going to be hard to find a trade partner. They have to be a contending team, with a lot of cap space. As far as cutting them, they will try to win this year, I don't see it happening.

1 hour ago, AZ54 said:

Whitehair's contract is getting way above his performance and is not sustainable beyond this season.  He's not worth a $14mil cap hit in 2023.   

If you think you can get better production for less, he is definitely someone the Bears can move on from.

I'm fully on board with ripping the band aid off.  We are not going to be good regardless of the cap, so get the cap right for future years.  It's my opinion that having a reset year will help this team more than anything cap wiggling can do.

Null