2025 Bears Offseason Thread

[jersey cubs fan]

22 minutes ago, Tunzi said:

 

Why because these are good decent people who spend their hard earned money mainly the middle class who 

The last time I was at soldier field I saw a former high school teacher of mine dressed up as a bear. He hit me in gym class and got fired for inappropriate relationships with female students 

[We Got The Whole 9]

Guys it's Ryan Poles, not the friggin team being cheap. He doesn't like free agency. And his latest venture, with Davis and Swift, is probably gonna push him even more to build through the draft and trade.

[jersey cubs fan]

18 minutes ago, minnesotacubsfan said:

maybe I cant let go of the old school "throws nickles around like they are manhole covers" concept honed by GH

George Halas died in 1983. That was about 3 generations of nfl football ago. The bears of the past 20 years have spent money. They’ve paid salaries to multiple head coaches simultaneously pretty much half the time since Lovie was canned. They pay guaranteed money to players from other teams that can’t get that money. 
They’ve upgraded facilities as well as just about anybody out there. 

they spend, full stop. It’s just a tired untrue silly complaint that doesn’t match up with what has gone down. 

[Irrelevant Dude]

3 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Guys it's Ryan Poles, not the friggin team being cheap. He doesn't like free agency.

He doesn't like free agency so much that he prefers to trade assets for guys who could most likely have been signed for the same or a lesser amount without giving up anything.

[BigSlick]

In a vacuum, I really do appreciate that Poles wants to build through the draft (and trade) and not blow up the salary cap. In practice.... well it hasn't worked out super great. 

But you guys really don't appreciate how nice it is to not be in salary cap hell all the time. Take a look at the Cleveland Browns, for example. 

[We Got The Whole 9]

3 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

In a vacuum, I really do appreciate that Poles wants to build through the draft (and trade) and not blow up the salary cap. In practice.... well it hasn't worked out super great. 

But you guys really don't appreciate how nice it is to not be in salary cap hell all the time. Take a look at the Cleveland Browns, for example. 

Salary cap hell is truly overstated and shouldn't last long. But when you give a fraud 20% of your cap it sucks for a little bit.

[gflore34]

1 hour ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Guys it's Ryan Poles, not the friggin team being cheap. He doesn't like free agency. And his latest venture, with Davis and Swift, is probably gonna push him even more to build through the draft and trade.

This off season, without question, he's got to do both.  Well, that is, if he's truly committed to improving the trenches.

[WrigleyField 22]

Obligatory Salary Cap is a Myth.

 

Now bad spending decisions still exist, but on a team level it ends very quickly.  Watson easily the worst single contract ever and it's only going to make them slightly uncomfortable from a cap mgmt standpoint.  New Orleans is the only team that's credibly in a cap hell territory because they've done foot on the gas for 20 years. And they still annually do more than a bunch of spreadsheet nerds say they can.  It's always overstated. If they wanted to they could basically "clean things up" in 1 year. It would be barely more painful than the tank job Poles willingly did his first year.

 

Every team is required to meet that minimum threshold (90% over 3 years for most of CBA).  The median team is typically spending like 108% percent of the cap in cash.  You can consistently go at least 115% of the cap year over year if you're committed to the approach.  Only when you explode it over a short time frame does it get somewhat difficult. So yea there isn't this massive difference, but I'd still rather spend the extra $20M or whatever.

 

The structure of Bears spending over past 3 years tells me it's probably a GM issue over ownership cheapness.  Poles structures his deals like someone who's afraid of dead cap hits.  That leads me to think it's not about ownership spending mandates (though it could be a small part)

 

So I think we have a scared-of-FA weenie at GM.  Which frankly is what most fans pined over (see: weird Ballard obsession from the fanbase)

[PackLandVA]

The "salary cap" in the NFL, much like posted speed limits, is merely a suggestion.

[PackLandVA]

3 hours ago, jersey cubs fan said:

That’s the David Letterman rule 

The irony of something being funny before no longer being funny as linked to David Letterman has not gone unnoticed.

[minnesotacubsfan]

2 hours ago, jersey cubs fan said:

George Halas died in 1983. That was about 3 generations of nfl football ago. The bears of the past 20 years have spent money. They’ve paid salaries to multiple head coaches simultaneously pretty much half the time since Lovie was canned. They pay guaranteed money to players from other teams that can’t get that money. 
They’ve upgraded facilities as well as just about anybody out there. 

they spend, full stop. It’s just a tired untrue silly complaint that doesn’t match up with what has gone down. 

I see them overspending for mediocre players (Davis for example) and not spending market value for marquee players (McGlinchey for example). Thats being cheap. Its likely a result of a scared GM, but its being cheap.

Edited January 10, 2025 by minnesotacubsfan

[minnesotacubsfan]

looking for "value" when you have $103 million in cap space is being cheap

 

[WrigleyField 22]

59 minutes ago, PackLandVA said:

The "salary cap" in the NFL, much like posted speed limits, is merely a suggestion.

Honestly the biggest thing people don't get is it's a league cap.  Not that teams don't have to account for their own spending, but if you spend cash over the cap that just gets pulled out of future cap increases for the whole league.  At that point your team gets the same share of that cap decrease 1/32.

 

So the trick to maximize it is spending more without guaranteeing too much or structuring it in a way that you overshoot and deal with timing issues and having to make bad $ value decisions just to service the cap. I think a consistent 10-12% overspend is probably ideal (and ideally as consistent as possible, not 20% over one year and offset the next).  But even up to 15% consistent overage is manageable.  I think Browns even were pushing past that but that was very dependent on Watson being like a 8-10 year QB for them.  That move flopping hurts them (not to mention lost picks). But it's a relatively minor pill to swallow especially because they understand it so won't spiral into a cash recesssion tank job to "clean up the cap" or some nonsense.

[BigSlick]

4 hours ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

Obligatory Salary Cap is a Myth.

 

Now bad spending decisions still exist, but on a team level it ends very quickly.  Watson easily the worst single contract ever and it's only going to make them slightly uncomfortable from a cap mgmt standpoint.  New Orleans is the only team that's credibly in a cap hell territory because they've done foot on the gas for 20 years. And they still annually do more than a bunch of spreadsheet nerds say they can.  It's always overstated. If they wanted to they could basically "clean things up" in 1 year. It would be barely more painful than the tank job Poles willingly did his first year.

 

Every team is required to meet that minimum threshold (90% over 3 years for most of CBA).  The median team is typically spending like 108% percent of the cap in cash.  You can consistently go at least 115% of the cap year over year if you're committed to the approach.  Only when you explode it over a short time frame does it get somewhat difficult. So yea there isn't this massive difference, but I'd still rather spend the extra $20M or whatever.

 

The structure of Bears spending over past 3 years tells me it's probably a GM issue over ownership cheapness.  Poles structures his deals like someone who's afraid of dead cap hits.  That leads me to think it's not about ownership spending mandates (though it could be a small part)

 

So I think we have a scared-of-FA weenie at GM.  Which frankly is what most fans pined over (see: weird Ballard obsession from the fanbase)

Thanks for the post. That all checks out to me. I definitely would love to see Poles have a little more chutzpah in the FA market. 

[BigSlick]

3 hours ago, minnesotacubsfan said:

looking for "value" when you have $103 million in cap space is being cheap

 

I think they’re two different things, or rather, the way you get there are different. When I hear ownership is “cheap” I hear: the ownership refused to extend the money to use in payroll. When you have a GM who is leery and reticent to spend over the cap because of value reasons or to avoid being in cap hell (whether or not it’s a real thing or not), it’s a very different thing.

i don’t think the Bears ownership is insisting on the Bears payroll being under the cap for any reason. I think Poles is just Like That. 
 

now you might say: ok they signed Poles BECAUSE they knew he’d underspend. I guess that’s a possibility in some way, but you don’t make any more money for being under the cap. That money largely has to go back to the players anyway.

Poles does it for strategic reasons. You might say, well, that’s dumb. And I agree. 

 

Edited January 11, 2025 by BigSlick

[jersey cubs fan]

12 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

I think they’re two different things, or rather, the way you get there are different. When I hear ownership is “cheap” I hear: the ownership refused to extend the money to use in payroll. When you have a GM who is leery and reticent to spend over the cap because of value reasons or to avoid being in cap hell (whether or not it’s a real thing or not), it’s a very different thing.

i don’t think the Bears ownership is insisting on the Bears payroll being under the cap for any reason. I think Poles is just Like That. 
 

now you might say: ok they signed Poles BECAUSE they knew he’d underspend. I guess that’s a possibility in some way, but you don’t make any more money for being under the cap. That money largely has to go back to the players anyway.

Poles does it for strategic reasons. You might say, well, that’s dumb. And I agree. 

 

Bottom line, it is, and always has been, incompetence 

[UMFan83]

So this is going around Bears twitter tonight and people are saying that it means Caleb isn’t a franchise guy because he got duped.  We really are the dumbest fanbase

[SpongeWorthy]

44 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

So this is going around Bears twitter tonight and people are saying that it means Caleb isn’t a franchise guy because he got duped.  We really are the dumbest fanbase

you will never know peace until you get off twitter

[Outshined_One]

Let's not link to an X account with actual white supremacist trash on it, thanks!

[NorthsideAvenger]

6 hours ago, Outshined_One said:

Let's not link to an X account with actual white supremacist trash on it, thanks!

Yep. Stop giving that trash site clicks.

[BigbadB]

The Bears 2024 salary cap was $260m. The Bears spent $254m+ and had $5m+ to improve the team at the trade deadline if the team was anything similar to a playoff caliber team. They were not a playoff caliber team, so that 5m+ can be applied to next year's cap.

It's not that they are cheap. It's that they have been clueless on how to successfully build the team to win. 

[Wilson A2000]

Not getting Ben Johnson and having him go to the Raiders because we insist on keeping Poles would be another low point for this franchise. Warren clearly isn’t enamored with Poles, so why is he still here? I guess everything comes down to the trade for Carolina’s 2024 pick.

[UMFan83]

5 hours ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

Yep. Stop giving that trash site clicks.

Wait we don't want to link to X at all anymore or that specific account?

I'm guessing you are referring to the specific account and now that I think about it, the account had that stupid pepe thing.  It didnt even click with me until this morning.  Apologies @Outshined_One and the board.  Definitely not the image I want to project here.

Edited January 11, 2025 by UMFan83

[Hairyducked Idiot]

11 minutes ago, Wilson A2000 said:

Not getting Ben Johnson and having him go to the Raiders because we insist on keeping Poles would be another low point for this franchise. Warren clearly isn’t enamored with Poles, so why is he still here? I guess everything comes down to the trade for Carolina’s 2024 pick.

The fact that Poles is still here leads me to think the most likely outcome of anything they do this off-season is bad 

[NorthsideAvenger]

14 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Wait we don't want to link to X at all anymore or that specific account?

I'm guessing you are referring to the specific account and now that I think about it, the account had that stupid pepe thing.  It didnt even click with me until this morning.  Apologies @Outshined_One and the board.  Definitely not the image I want to project here.

For me, the site is trash.