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Daniels probably will have to start running less at some point, but very clearly he has enough talent to buy himself the time to round out the passing game fully. I mean it's only year 1 for him. But yea, he ended up in a great spot. Washington went about things the right way. Just super impressive all around. The Bears failed Caleb and would have failed Daniels, but regrettably I think Daniels has also shown enough where he has a better chance to be the better QB long term, even if Caleb is allowed the time to develop.

I'm highly cynical about how effective the Rooney Rule has been. But if the Bears are gonna sham up the interview they better leak some glowing reviews out of it, yea. Heck, they could probably easily beat his salary even for a non coordinator assistant role if he wants to make a NFL jump. If it's literally just to check a box, I hope they get all the fake/misplaced outrage that Patriots got.

No, not really. Rooney Rules have to be in person and currently employed coaches (which is most candidates) can't interview until Monday at soonest.

I don't think seeing the Tomlin situation and placing a call is throwing horsefeathers at the wall. I wouldn't have been thrilled with a Tomlin hire, let alone a trade, but at the same time I'm not mad they called, either. Steelers really love their stability if they didn't even entertain it though.

He'd probably do a better job if he was shadow making decisions. We're just signing his ****** clients. That's their own damn fault.

Hope Monken is in there too. A Johnson-McCarthy shut out is very plausible outcome... What's behind door 3

Unless you have dreams of Jeanty, probably just bet to put him to best use you can and start succession planning with a mid round pick.

6.1m of his 2025 8m salary/bonus is guaranteed. Gotta eat that unless he's a trade target.

It's most fun to be an assistant after you sign a 4-5 year guaranteed Head coach contract and then go back to assistant. Bonus points if your Vic making top coordinator money.

I'm still Johnson -big gap- Monken-McCarthy, but fully admit *vibes* might be the only reason I have Monken ahead of him. Waddle and Silvy had Gase on to talk Johnson (coached together in Miami) and former Packer Mark Tauscher to talk McCarthy. Both were decent listens (they also had Urlacher on to talk Freeman and I had no interest in listening to that one)

Chico/Thayer/Peanut as the Sr advisors to Chairman/CEO for the next GM/HC search in 2028 (when we fire Poles and Weaver). 1. Experienced coach and former player, relative non idiot 2. Media personality and former player, relative non idiot 3. General cool legend, non idiot (can run FBI background checks?)

And yet their VP of Player personnel is one of the most respected talent evaluators in the league. Jerry is an interesting situation in terms of bosses go, but I think if you hit it off there's a lot of loyalty there. And he can be an extremely cheap ass mother horsefeathers, but at the same time will pay up when he feels it's warranted.. He just really doesn't like wasting money - which is why he let McCarthy go through his contract in a lame duck year. It probably runs hot or cold in its attractiveness among the openings.

I truely think Fox was checked out. I don't know how you protect against that but hopefully since an old McCarthy pal isn't on the search committee that helps? But even still, McCarthy's w% clips Fox's .608 to .572. Even Dallas era McCarthy clips that at .583. And it's offense instead of defense so automatically better.

Put him in that Ditka sweater vest and make him grow a mustache. I promise he'll be a cult hero the first double digit win season

Low key I think this is the issue for many. Put him on ozempic and his favorability rating skyrockets. Hes probably 3rd for me after Johnson and Monken at this point. I think I'd have slated Vrabel ahead when he was available. Johnson Monken McCarthy Tier 2 (spin young hot OC wheel no specific order) Coen, Brady Tier 3 (would probably talk myself into) Carroll, Shaw, Flores Rest not worth ranking either because my opinion is low or uninformed.

Brown won't count towards Rooney Rule. Glenn and Flores they can't get in the door until earliest the 20th. If they were really trying to make a push for Vrabel they had to find a way to advance the timeline of 2 in person interviews. Not saying they could have closed as quick as NE did who really blatantly sham interviewed the Rooney Rule interviews, but there could be something there and at least one insider alluded to it... It's also possible now that among the group of Weaver, Shaw, Glenn, Flores they only end up needing to bring 1 in person. If 3 don't wow, you'd have basically still had to have advanced one. On Shaw I've seen conflicting reports on if he's restricted from in-person interviews like employed coaches are - he's an employee of Denver, but as an Exec...

Hard to support Thomas Brown back in any capacity honestly. Had a little bit of a dead cat bounce when he became OC, but his cumulative record, including his time last year in Carolina is a tough sell. Seems likely McCarthy is back in Dallas and if not I see him sitting out a year or doing some light Sr advisor horsefeathers for a year. Going to a OC role does little for him.

I think we should slow down with the idea of HC interviews as secret coordinator interviews. There's a least some speculation Ron was brought in person specifically due to Rooney Rule... I don't know is that's truely the case, but Bears were behind 8 ball with Vrabel if they were making a serious run at him. For what it is worth he seemed to come out of nowhere and is the only in person interview so far when all others, even Carroll and Vrabel were reported to be virtual. Maybe there is something there, though they are still one Rooney Rule interview short if they were trying to close Vrabel quickly. Or they legit had interest. Or they are just doing a lot of network/info gathering and Rivera is a former HC in a search with only a few others like that who could give new perspectives. Or George mandated it because the org still lives in 1985 and 2006. Or Poles actually likes him (thus explains why George is so behind him)

No

Vrabel wasn't free until recently. How exactly are they supposed to narrow down the 5 of 6? People just need to stop being impatient. Bears have often worked quickly - it means nothing.

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.

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)

Fake insiders on Twitter are going absolutely lit spreading rumors on the candidate interviews.

Poles said he would. But Browns already getting OC requests. I kind of imagine Poles has already told him it's not happening.... Who knows.

When he wasn't almost accidentally kneeling it down