WrigleyField 22

New owner could probably finance a stadium. That's probably the biggest thing. So as far as the value of that ymmv. Why would they do that? Well they surely wouldn't finance the whole project, but they could chip in more than the McCakseys. That's basically why they have Soldier Field. A rich and experienced businessperson would have a dome and enough equity to make it very worthwhile, while milking the state for as much as they could.

New owner could probably finance a stadium. That's probably the biggest thing. So as far as the value of that ymmv.

Do you mean move the team from Chicago to the burbs? Or move the team outta state? I can’t see any buyer moving the team out of IL. out of the metro area mainly. It certainly can happen, and given the history of the Bears I would def not want it to. I honestly dont want them to move off the lakeshore and I'm not sure what the reason would be other then to get a bigger stadium and field turf. traffic? Bigger/domed stadium and in the case of a venue the size of Arlington, an entire entertainment district. Thing is, even by the end of the Bears lease, in 2033, It's hard to imagine IL being in a position to be ready/willing to help finance a project. Maybe NW Indiana inserts itself in the field at that point again if a new owner is shopping around for a new venue while still keeping them in the area.

Dang, you must be old. It will always be to me: 312 - city, but also 773, but only for like... Luna Carpet 708 - cook county burbs (where I grew up) 630 - west collar counties 847 - North collar counties Everything else- here be dragons. Which to me, 331 or 224 is still here be dragon territory even though it's the same as 630 and 847. Like those aren't real area codes. My doctor has 331 and it's still odd to me. Well yeah I'm old. But the first split 312/708 was '89 and more than half the board was alive and kicking by then. The next split 708/630 was '96, and I wasn't even in the area at the time, but technically it was my home. Okay I was born in 88. So not old enough to remember 312 in a 708 area. But I had no idea it was in my lifetime. That 630 was also part of 708 I had no idea either. We attended a church in a 630 area code so my friends from there were all 630'ers and as I recall there was a specific line I had to call them from. But I guess their 708 days predated the time where I would have called friends myself by a couple years. Also this is somewhat unrelated to area codes, but also when I was in elementary school I had to learn a new zip code because we went from sharing with Maywood to having our own zip. And I specifically remember some kid messing it up in class the fall after it happened and feeling bad for him for getting it wrong, like "Damn bro you didn't get the memo" lol.

312 was also the burbs Dang, you must be old. It will always be to me: 312 - city, but also 773, but only for like... Luna Carpet 708 - cook county burbs (where I grew up) 630 - west collar counties 847 - North collar counties Everything else- here be dragons. Which to me, 331 or 224 is still here be dragon territory even though it's the same as 630 and 847. Like those aren't real area codes. My doctor has 331 and it's still odd to me.

Those are some odd choices for the IL area codes. I guess I get the non Chicagoland area codes inclusion. But they did 630 and 331 instead of including 847? And they forgot 414 8-)

Fields tore up a bunch of day 3 picks and UDFAs. Big if true. I kid I kid.

Most of his articles are teeerrrrrrible. I recently subscribed tp the DH becuase I wanted some daily local news source. But it's pretty worthless for sports.

I can't for the life of me even understand what Julie there is trying to say.

According to my much smarter than me BIL (econ PhD) it's a. 0226% chance at a alternating H-A schedule given totally random distribution in 1 17 game season. Obviously some schedules the NFL would never let happen though for instance HHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAA. So probably quite a bit larger odds in practical terms, but still. Pretty unusual!

Also, if they did want a "soft" opener for Fields its week 2 or 4 at home against Bengals/Lions. So yea, Fields by week 4? I can deal with that wait if I have to.

No back to back home or aways. Weird. Jet lag tracker! Pacific Central (H) Eastern Central (H) Pacific Central (H) Eastern Central (H) Eastern Bye Central (H) Eastern Central (H) Central Central (H) Pacific (On a short week to the biggest HFA stadium in the league!) Central (H) Central

Well AKME and Vooch have to give them a better chance than GarPax and Lavine alone. But yea, its not necessarily a great FA year. And this would otherwise be a great window to make a big move before Zach is expensive because you can use bird rights on him. Trade wise they're just limited in the fact that they're not going to be able to deal FRPs for a few years. If there were any salary dump targets though I think they could do a Sato-Thad swap and pick up a FRP (Sato and Thad are only partially guaranteed, so good for a team trying to get under tax/cap). Then they have additional assets to deal from to make another move as well. I guess they just need to the best they can in FA as they can, but still keep an eye towards a consolidation trade. That Vooch move would have been a lot better if they had pulled off a Ball trade at the deadline too. As is, they're still kind of straddling a weird line between getting under the cap or being able to build using bird rights and the exceptions.

Just saw a great summary on RealGM the other day on this; https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2079458 (the link to Shamsports is also a great tool to play around with scenarios on your own as well)

no real running game? i mean, it may or may not be very good. montgomery was pretty damn good last year. but i'd say there's enough there (plus with cohen back and herbert looks like a guy you can plug in there too) to qualify as "real" whatever that really means. and robinson, mooney (to say nothing of guys like miller - who has been a disappointment but seems talented enough to be *fine* as a 3rd guy on the depth chart) is as good a WR tandem as I've seen the bears have short of the marshall/alshon years. then there's guys like byrd and even dumb ass wims who are cromulent relative to their spots on the depth chart. kmet may or may not turn into something but i don't hate our TE situation. i guess my qualm is with calling those skill position situations "extremely limited." maybe i'm a little biased because of how bad the bears historically have been on offense but i think they're far from devoid of guys to get the ball to. they're far from stacked like the chiefs or anything but yeah. this is an org we've watched go into seasons with scrap heap roy williams and devin hester as a #1 WR. those teams were extremely limited in weapons. this is just kinda maybe average-ish or maybe much better with a good QB. And of course it's also possible that Fields, not Dalton is who will maximize those other skill players. I get this ultimately ends up being a ton of counterfactual arguments here, but it's worthwhile to be agressive with Fields and Jenkins developments. I don't particularly think eithers draft slots is that reflective of their talent and the Bears were incredibly luck to get both. Use 'em, IMO. Now sure Fields has to bear out Dalton. And Jenkins. I guess Wilkerson? But presumably they show undeniable skill and compentanct over the playbook. Let's go.

The point was more of you can't look at the schedule and say, "oh we can't start Fields because Aaron Donald is on the other team, and it's on the road and in primetime, it may be too much for the rookie". The 2nd paragraph was more of a general statement about people wanting a rookie to sit simply because he's a rookie. Fans and coaches, including our very own Nagy who keeps talking about how Mahomes sitting helped him, think this way and there's really no semblance of proof that sitting for the sake of sitting actually does anything positive or negative. Like Mitch didn't suck because he was thrown in Week 5 instead of sitting all season as originally planned. I would mostly disagree that you can ruin rookies, but I do believe there have been extreme cases (David Carr the most glaring one) where rookies have been ruined by what they are surrounded by (coaches, teammates, bad OL, bad WRs). I don't think the Bears are that much of a disaster that they will ruin Fields by throwing him in week 1 vs. week 14. Obviously, you wait until he's completely ready as a QB but I think it's a dangerous proposition to wait until Jenkins is ready. There's a chance Jenkins can never handle his job. He could be just a bad player. You can't keep Fields off the field because your rookie tackle can't play. That's like sitting Cutler until Chris Williams proved he could handle his job. Obviously, it's the line as a whole, but Cutler's line was pretty bad pretty much the whole time he was here. Granted, he wasn't an inexperienced rookie but I think the point remains. Waiting on the OL to solidify is similar to waiting for a home game against an easy opponent. Those have nothing to do with the QBs ability to run the offense correctly (successfully is a different story). Definitely. This isn't an expansion franchise line that is going to be in front of the QB, even if it turns out Jenkins sucks.

100% to all of this. NFL coaches and fans are needlessly conservative. And they end up making things up. I saw someone claim that ideally you don't start someone at LT because it's the "hardest" position in the line. And when I looked up the 10 highest paid LTs, 8 of the 10 were year 1 starters at LT and the other 2, year 2 starters at LT. (there's probably some survivorship/selection bias there, but still) For QBs, unless there is some mechanical overhaul you think needs to happen, which obviously comes with its own risks, the guy should be out there as soon as he can handle the full playbook at the latest. And based on what we've heard with Fields that shouldnt be an issue (besides Dalton only has like a 1.5 month headstart in the O).

Well the Bears definitely learned their lesson with the Glennon draft day party surprise lol. I mean tough horsefeathers for Glennon, I found it more funny than anything and he got paid handsomely to horsefeathers down his leg for 4 games, but probably best they didn't do the same again.

I'm admittedly a contrarian on this point, but moving Quinn's guarantees doesn't make him harder to cut later on. Yes, it creates a potential big dead cap penalty in 2022, but it's offset by the 2021 savings you need now. The only difference is timing, but it's all a sunk cost. And sunk costs shouldn't determine personnel decisions. The only cap downside is it makes it much harder to trade him in 2021, but I'm assuming that's a very narrow possibility anyways to the point that it's of zero concern. Correct in that it’s the same net money over time, but still makes him harder to cut. You’re paying him less now to pay him more next year when you cut him. Overall, it’s the same money, just paid during different cap years. And paying him more guaranteed 2022 money makes him harder to cut after this season. Its a pedantic point, but restructuring Quinn really doesnt matter. Ultimately every unearned contract you go forward with is a choice. For example, is Hicks worth 10.5M? Is Graham worth 7M? Is Charles Leno worth 8.9M. Etc. Each of those is choices. Spend it now or spend it on a replacement. Or save it all for the future. Quinn restructure or Mack's is just an excercise in timing. But just cause you may have answered those earlier questions poorly, doesn't mean playing around with timing of another dead hit is bad or affects 2022. The decisions on the other guys in 2021 is what actually affects 2022.

Anothony Miller news incoming next?

I'm admittedly a contrarian on this point, but moving Quinn's guarantees doesn't make him harder to cut later on. Yes, it creates a potential big dead cap penalty in 2022, but it's offset by the 2021 savings you need now. The only difference is timing, but it's all a sunk cost. And sunk costs shouldn't determine personnel decisions. The only cap downside is it makes it much harder to trade him in 2021, but I'm assuming that's a very narrow possibility anyways to the point that it's of zero concern.

A reminder of how well Alex Smith did to ensure Mahomes didn't see the field until Week 17. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SmitAl03/gamelog/2017/ I don't think Dalton is going to Glennon it up. But Fields is more ready that Trubisky was, and Dalton also isn't going to play at a Pro Bowl level, nor is he in year 5 of Nagy's system. Dalton's head start in the system is like 2 months. Really the more I think on it, Week 1 wouldn't surprise me, but NFL coaches are a notoriously conservative bunch.

No such thing as a Leno truther. Just contrarians who probably complained about Leno all through the past 2 years until the day he was cut. Decent portion of the fan base also just seems terrified at "ruining" Jenkins, but most of what I've read has me pretty bullish on his ability to play LT just fine. I admittedly am a bit of a "The Blind Side is Overblown" truther myself though, so YMMV.

Yeah I just worry about the fact that Nagy was on the Chiefs when they sat Mahomes his rookie year (besides Week 17). He's already alluded to this in press conferences. I dont think anyone thought Mahomes was nearly as polished as Fields is, however. I think the pressure will be to move Fields into the starter role asap Didn't a lot of the things that Mahomes supposedly had to work on basically end up being totally moot because he was just so good? So basically; 1. Adjusting from Air Raid to a Pro offense (he hadn't ever ran a huddle!) - Probably didn't need a whole season for that 2. Things like mechanics to which he basically responded with a "lol no I'm going to throw from 20 different arm slots, from my back foot, and sometimes even facing the opposite end zone because I can"

Restructure Quinn. Cut Graham/Hicks. Even a Goldman restructure is out there- that's only a few mil, but any FA add this late shouldn't be a ton of money- not sure who's even out there-anyone actually better than Trufant, or is it about just throwing bodies out there?