WrigleyField 22

Okay good cal raw, maybe the cap won't be 175M. https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/12/06/optimism-emerges-regarding-2021-salary-cap/ The implicit part is that can growth probably will still lag a bit. So certain teams like the Saints who's cap management was reliant on large growths like they've had the past decade are probably still in a no win spot. Bears at least get some breathing room at 195 though. I still wouldn't go all in, but they could maybe do something like sign a young bigger money OL to stabilize the line. Perhaps could sign Arob or at least have the cap space to confidently try a tag and trade situation.

Is team president really a carrot with appeal in the NFL? How many team presidents are real working GMs under 60? Football people are egomaniacs that want to make the decisions about players. Most teams that are good eventually become a head coach centric organization. I don't really see the opportunity to give a current successful GM a promotion to take over football ops and then hand over those ops to a GM. Yea, I think Indy could block that. It's basically just describing a GM with a fancy title. Maybe you could comp them to get him, but then they're not letting Dodds go along for the ride who they can make GM. If I was going to make a call into a long shot, it'd probably be Schneider from Seattle. He's technically the number 2 to Carrol so I don't even think they can block it, though he does seem pretty content in.his gig and Carrol is the oldest head coach, so maybe he thinks this most recent contract extension is the last hurrah. Rick Smith is an intriguing candidate from someone with experience. Maybe Rosman gets canned In Philly and he has a mixed record, but worth talking to. Otherwise I think you're likely back in the VP of Player personnel track like Pace/Ballard were.

The cap even being 195 would ease up a ton. I'd still probably look into accelerating some of the dead hits coming their way and not make any big splashes in FA for a year. A little detox, I guess you could say.

I was pointing this out earlier in this thread (I think), there are a ton of bad teams this year. Granted, there are more games to settle things out, chances are the Bears do better then most There is only 3 teams I see us having no shot to pass (JAX, NYJ, CIN). All the other teams are 3-8, 4-8 or tied at 5-7. A lot of these teams have games against each other too, and the Bears themselves have an opportunity to leap over Houston themselves. Presuming no ties, I think the worst the Bears could do (not officially just a guess based on the schedules) is pick 9th if they finish 5-11. I don't think the Bears will finish 5-11 though, they will win at least 1 more which sucks. Like I said earlier, most mock drafts have the top 4 QBs going in the top 10. I actually really like all 4 of them so I really want to be in position for one. I know it doesn't work this simply, but if you go to the NFL playoff machine and just chose Win% you end up with 10+ 5 win teams or worse. Sure one or two could outplay their record the rest of the way, but it doesn't seem promising to vault into the top 10 at 5-11 unless you win the SoS tiebreaker (not sure where the Bears will fall there). Those "projected" 5 win or worse teams; Jets, Chargers, Broncos, Bengals, Jaguars, Texans, Cowboys, Eagles, Lions, Panthers, Falcons. Bears actually going 5-11 flips Houston above them likely. So that helps. But there's a big glut around that 4 or 5 win mark that will be tough to pass.

Yea I think a lot of small positive changes or small negative changes seemingly have a way of cascading. Flip the easy negative things you can first and be prepared to pounce on the BIG game changers when they come up, like drafting a potential franchise QB.

FWIW, a couple posts I made on a Bears message board in regards to the cap. There's some context missing here where I was replying to specific things, but lays out either end of the extreme that they have with their cap options. Option 1- Accelerate hits and free up just enough cap to fill out roster with low salary/minimum salary and draft pool, with a small cushion; Option 2 - Double down and maximize 2021 cap. But specifically I was exploring how you could do it without cutting guys. Obviously some combination of cuts and restructures would be at play. So you can play around with the middle ground between those paths, but those are basically the barriers on either side of the 2021 cap management game.

I think a Mack trade saves a tiny amount still. About $4m I think. The trading team takes on guaranteed money, you just eat the dead cap hits from bonus pro-rations. Even if it was a slight dead cap in 2021 you could move around other stuff to reallocate cap hits and you're still saving in net a big chunk, and more importantly squeezing out some resources from him. The cap stuff is pretty fluid due to the rollforward nature of it and I think it's important to look at "unearned" savings rather than focusing too much on dead hits, which are a sunk cost. According to Spotrac, he costs us $26m if he's on the roster in 2021 and a $37m dead-cap hit if he's not: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/chicago-bears/khalil-mack-14414/ We used most of our wiggle-room on the cap last year. It's not an infinite well. Fwiw I usually prefer OTC. They do a good job analyzing this stuff for the NFL specifically and spotrac is more a generalist and aggregator. https://overthecap.com/player/khalil-mack/2944/

I think a Mack trade saves a tiny amount still. About $4m I think. The trading team takes on guaranteed money, you just eat the dead cap hits from bonus pro-rations. Even if it was a slight dead cap in 2021 you could move around other stuff to reallocate cap hits and you're still saving in net a big chunk, and more importantly squeezing out some resources from him. The cap stuff is pretty fluid due to the rollforward nature of it and I think it's important to look at "unearned" savings rather than focusing too much on dead hits, which are a sunk cost.

Whoa slow down :lol: I do like Mooney a lot. And Kmet might still turn into something. Miller TBD. Montgomery, JAG who you should replace with another rookie contract player in a year.

I think a multi year concerted tank is never reality in the NFL. I honestly don't even like that "Process" style effort in the NBA (at least anymore with new lottery odds) but it's somewhat more defensible there. I think it should be a hard "reset" year where they do just shed as much of the dead caps as they can. To your point about replacing those guys the one positive is that like half the league is in a cap crunch this offseason because of covid. NO is going to be like 100M over and PHI 75M over before getting to cuts. So they will definitely be able to bargain shop for 1 year deals to replace those roster spots for a year, at which point, if they fully committed to it, cap sanity should be restored in 2022. So I'd say a mini tank. And figure out what your cost on Fuller and Mack is. Don't move them at any cost, but for a reasonable deal. Hicks get a late pick for if you can. Everyone else is young enough to keep or too worthless to trade. Of course there are ways for them to put together another half assed shot at it in 2021. I played around with it and they could free up enough to make a few second teir signings, maybe even for a new QB like a Brissett. Not a fan of that option AT ALL, but the cap could be manipulated to do such a thing. But anyways after that one year mini tank you'll have some cap space and a healthy balance sheet. You will have all all of your early picks in tact for two years. Should have several comp picks over 2 years and perhaps a few extra picks if you did manage to trade Mack/Fuller. The biggest question is QB, but teams frequently do quick builds in the NFL, without taking extreme shortcuts like a Khalil Mack type trade.

Yes? No? Maybe? Ultimately I think its McCaskeys vision and the president is just an extension of that. If he back filled that role its going to be someone who fulfills that vision and that's a very stable job thats not going to be as closely tied to W-L as GM/HC. So they can outlast a legacy GM and HC hire- its just a much bigger scale and long term hire. Which leads me to think it's a longer role to search for and you cant wait on that for GM/HC, unless you have an internal candidate, like perhaps Cliff Stein. Or you restructure the org where the GM no longer reports up through the president, but the operate more in parallel (like Cubs with Boyer-Kenney operating their sides), but I do think that setup requires more active management from ownership. Mostly I'm just prepping for the onslaught of hot takes that suggest replacing Phillips with basically a super GM role, some experienced football personnel exec. I think I may have made that same arguement 6 years ago, but do realize that's a simplistic way to think about it all.

I think the Phillips hate is usually some combination of misplaced or overstated. It's probably a role they could upgrade, though I don't think it's hugely important to football ops. From what I've looked around in many orgs a non "football person" being at the top between GM and owner isn't unusual. Some orgs do have a GM report directly to the owner, but those seem to typically be orgs with a much more hands on owner- how the Bears were until Phillips was named Pres- where a principal or minority owner was acting in that President role. So people need to think broadly about it as being another business hire primarily and not someone who's going to fix football personnel issues. That said, if they do replace Phillips and plan to have a President/CEO role between the top football exec and George, timing gets kind of interesting. I assume that the Pres search will be a longer search than a coach/GM search. If they fire Phillips tomorrow, maybe they have time to bring in a new President by the time the season ends and that person, with George, leads the GM search and subsequently HC hire. If they're all fired on Black Monday, not only will you be at 3rd and 4th choice GM/HC/assistant coach hires, but they'd be going into valuable offseason time for those new hires. So perhaps the other likely course is that if all 3 were fired black Friday, McCaskey announces that the two searches are separate and he immediately will start on the GM search with an Accorsi like advisor again and that a president would be named at a later date. That keeps them on a competetive timeline with other teams for coach/GM. OR as a slightly more unconventional route, go with an interim-like route. Fire just Phillips and Pace. Elevate a guy like Champ Kelly on the football side and Cliff Stein on the business ops side to act in acting/interim roles and that a President search won't be rushed and that person will make final decisions about personnel at the conclusion of 2021 season. Nagy stays on since he has 2 years and isn't a lame duck like Pace would have been. Or just fire Pace and Nagy on Black Monday and kind of just quietly start pushing Phillips aside, but don't make any formal announcements until the new GM is hired at which time you announce that in the new structure the GM will report directly to George and Phillips formally becomes just a glorified CFO/COO. Then in a year or two formally part ways with Phillips and then look to insert a new President/CEO. In any event, the worst combination would seem to be a Black Monday trifecta and then trying to replace all 3 in a like 6 week time span of successive hires, along with dozens of new FO staffers and assistants. So some other shoe seemingly has to drop from a timeline perspective.

Lol. Boars.

There's a lot of overlap with Coward in and out of the lineup with this too right? Little of column A. Little of column B.

Damn :( Good luck Len.

His signing in 2028 will be BIG.

Yes.

Never moving at all is dumb. Unfortunately there's no hard and fast rule. Take the Trubisky pick. At the time I'd have assumed he must have been far and away their top QB. When you have the rare opportunity of a top 3 pick, if you have an opportunity for a QB you take it and if there's only one you do so aggressively IMO. Since then there was the article that came out that revisited that draft and apparently Mahomes and Trubisky, along with a few others, were all very closely bunched for the Bears. The 3 pick insurance policy for 1 spot when you have 2 QBs you like very closely? Real dumb risk management there if that was in fact the board. That's doing the opposite of what you should do- trust your evaluation. In areas where you may see real divisions of your board, explore trading up or fielding the trade down calls. All that said I of course have some complaints about Paces draft management. As to acquiring picks I think the best way to do that is through clever management of the comp pick system and knowing when to trade away vets. Trading up or down with picks is rarely inherently good or bad, though I do have a preference for even pick swaps i.e. 2 for 2 if you're trading up and am not particularly fond of 3 for 1 trade-up swaps.

Boo trading back just for the sake of collecting picks. I get lasering in on a target isn't great, but fans always like the idea of extra picks and then inevitably just hate the picks. It's basically the "why dont thet make the whole plane out of the black box" form of draft analysis.

Well said A couple awesome Pace overpays (trades with actual picks) Bears get - Trubisky #2 Bears give - Solomon Thomas #3(could have been DeShaun) Alvin Kamara (2017 3rd) Tedric Thompson (2017 4th picked Eddie Jackson one pick after this pick by trading up) Fred Warner (2018 3rd rounder) Bears get - Anthony Miller (2018 2nd) Bears give - Antonio Callaway (2018 4th) Mecole Hardman (2019 2nd) Of course there are lots of over draft examples - 2020 Kmet 2019 Montgomery, Ridley, really you could say the whole draft 2018 A Miller, 2017 Trubisky, Shaheen 2016 Floyd (I thought we were trading up for Tunsil) 2015 White, Grasu I can't fault him for 4th round on, he's had some really good picks. But he does not value picks appropriately and also overpays in FA, notably Graham and Quinn here recently. I cant necessarily get behind the overpay complaint too much. This past off season was bad. In prior seasons though it does seem like he prioritized ascending players rather than paying for past performance. Now obviously you'll miss on those as well, but he's generally targeted the right type rather than just going after the most pedigreed guys in FA. Granted you'd rather develop and pay your own guys, so FA is never going to be truly efficient cap spending, but Graham and Quinn are probably the most egregious paying for downside moves.

Per "the chart" 2 high sixths might get you one slot in the mid first round. Realistically no one want two sixth though. They'll just demand a mid 4th which is the same point value (which the Bears happen to lack). In the mid 1st, 3 slots would be like a late third though. Eta misunderstood the original question.. In the third it could be 5 spots. If we're talking comp picks which are like high sevenths, which about adds up. I personally don't like that as a trade up though. 3 for 1 trades are icky to me in the middle rounds. Nothing is official by they project to have 2 6ths and a 7th from comp picks. And +1 from Shaheen and (-1) from Piniero, both a 6th or 7th, so roughly net even. I think Over The Cap shows the comp pick limit hitting after the Bears second 6th rounder, so no 7th round comp pick. I heard that Shaheen being resigned triggered his conditional pick to go from 7th to 6th (no idea how to verify that). Piniero is to Oak. So they would have 1 2 3 4 -> to Minnesota 5 6 6 from Miami 6 Comp 6 Comp I see that now. I was looking at the cancellation chart before which doesn't show the limit/cap... All comp picks done by Rd 6 is really odd. Normally you see a couple miss the cutoff. Maybe teams are really getting smart about maximizing comp pick value? https://overthecap.com/draft/ The list does appear to be slightly out of date. For instance Clinton Dix shouldn't qualify anymore I believe as he ended up being cut. Presuming there could be a few more updates, KPLs pick is up there as one of the next they project to count. So 3 still seems like a decent shot. And while they show a 6th for KPL thats probably borderline 7th.

Is the "fired head coach dead cat" bounce a real thing or are you just trying to stay positive? When a coach was as disliked as much as Patricia apparently was, I feel like it's a thing.

I got sucked into engaging with Twitter idiots today that are still like, "Retool, SB Champs 2021 Baby!" (more or less)

OL lasting forever if a bad adage that should die. Theres 5 of them so we remember the guys who stand the test of time like a Whitworth, but he's a unicorn. 8 years is a really good run for a OL. 6 is still pretty decent. Usually it's like 6 years of good play then 2 where they get by on reputation. Sure it's longer than a RB, but about up there with any other non QB-RB or specialist position.

It of course just depends on circumstance. If they have a cloud of 4 that are very close maybe you consider trading down 3 for an extra mid round pick from 15 to 18. Later in the draft, popping on a trade up and parting with a 6th, where they probably have 3-4 sixths, knock yourself out. Either way, I don't think trading down is going to dramatically improve their draft strength. If they want to actually improve draft capital it's by figuring out which vets, who could be gone in a year anyways, might net something. Thats how you are more likely to significantly alter your draft capital. Mack and Fuller are probably the only significant guys who might net you something interesting. So gotta figure out your price. Anyone else might get you some late picks... Just a matter of taking what you could get if you might be cutting them anyways (see, Hicks) I tend to discredit the later round picks so much that I wouldn't even think to package them to move up, but I also didn't realize they had any additional picks in those later rounds. That being said, what would (2) 6th round picks get you? I cant imagine too much, 5 slots in the 3rd? Per "the chart" 2 high sixths might get you one slot in the mid first round. Realistically no one want two sixth though. They'll just demand a mid 4th which is the same point value (which the Bears happen to lack). In the mid 1st, 3 slots would be like a late third though. Eta misunderstood the original question.. In the third it could be 5 spots. If we're talking comp picks which are like high sevenths, which about adds up. I personally don't like that as a trade up though. 3 for 1 trades are icky to me in the middle rounds. Nothing is official by they project to have 2 6ths and a 7th from comp picks. And +1 from Shaheen and (-1) from Piniero, both a 6th or 7th, so roughly net even.