WrigleyField 22

I still think it'll be tricky to fire Fox, while giving Pace an extension, on some level. Fox "retiring" seems like the best way out, in my mind. As far as Trubisky goes, over/under 100 passes thrown in 2017? I believe they will go with the "mutual decision to go in another direction" approach. Fox will get paid to not coach in 2018, when he'll be 63 and coming off three straight crappy seasons. Fox would theoretically be available for another job, if there was a talented veteran team that needed a stable coach. But my guess is he'll ride into the sunset and fish with all the other guys while making occasional TV gigs (if those still exist by then). I'm guessing the Fox cutoff for return is 8 wins. Pace, 3 (not my personal cutoff, just a prediction).

Yea, he's probably one of the more interesting UDFA names to watch. Assuming Royal is eventually cut, the number 5 WR spot should be pretty wide open, which is really like the no 4 WR with Whites health.

I'm just confused at his general point. We have, collectively teams trading up 30 spots for QBs and rumors of interest for trades up to 5 for the very QB the Bears picked, and some interest for unconfirmed positions as high as 2 and 3. Maybe most the world thinks hes crazy, but apparently the part of the world in his same position is pretty split on the matter.

Huh?

Actually since Polian was brought up... Buffalo Bills '86 : 4-12 '87 : 7-8 '88 : 12-4 Indianapolis Colts '97 : 3-13 '98 : 3-13 '99 : 13-3 Is it too soon to start a Bye Week thread and discuss the more favorable Divisional round opponent?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.all22.com/chicago-bears/bears-trade-mitchell-trubisky-threw-wrench-titans-trade-plans/amp So basically Pace had a two pronged approach to hide his interest in Trubisky and work the phones to secretly move up. The former was so successful the latter was unnecessary. Thats getting pretty close to being a narrative we can accept, right?

Hey, if there was a need for like some high level advisor role, Polian would be cool, but lets not go pining for some dinosaur former GM who won one Super Bowl with prime Peyton Manning either. Yeesh.

Why do I feel like I just read some hilariously wrong Polian QB love this weekend from a prior draft? I mean, hes done this a long time so everyone has flops, but should this make us excited?

Man, I was really wanting Cutler to end up on Houston. Actually I think they should still be pretty fun to watch with Watson, but Cutler would have been fun as hell there.

Bears sign Bradley Sowell. 6 starts at LT and 3 at RT for Seahawks last year. 12 start at LT for Arizona in 2013. Will compete for swing tackle spot.

Thanks, pretty good article; I actually think Chicago fans are struggling with this based on what I've seen/read elsewhere. We're a collectively a scarred bunch and just want our comfort zone of great defenses and Jim Miller-Shane Matthews, Rex Grossman-Kyle Orton QB battles. Since when was Grossman anything like those others Uh, statistically he was.

Also I kind of love the story on our UDFA rookie kicker. He is already 27 and spent 4 year on the US Ski team. And I really hope he's good enough to beat out Barth.

exactly my thought when I saw those earlier. David Cobb was a big sleeper fantasy RB pick for me a few years ago, lol. I think he was a relatively high pick, but got injured and then has done nothing.

Would make me feel better about our DL rotation. Any interesting OLB out there too? Also this; And mostly some guys who should get some "Who?" reacations

Thanks, pretty good article; I actually think Chicago fans are struggling with this based on what I've seen/read elsewhere. We're a collectively a scarred bunch and just want our comfort zone of great defenses and Jim Miller-Shane Matthews, Rex Grossman-Kyle Orton QB battles.

The 99% its better to move down guy again lol? Anyways, very possibly, SF and Chi both win the trade, and the loser is Cle, or someone else who maybe was trying to trade up for Trubisky. If no one else was seriously trying to trade up for Trubisky, then Chi doesn't necessarily quite lose the trade, but did obviously overpay. Not that it's of any consequence, but I feel like you're taking that number and that statement a little too literally lol I get it's not literal, but by its very nature it should basically a 50/50 proposition, so it's not like the guy is using hyperbole to make the point that its a very big number, lol.

Who basically sounds about as smart as the average Score caller in this sequence from the Peter King article. Liking Trubisky enough to pick him at three, but drawing the line at the trade is a weird line to draw to me. I'm a fan of valuing mid round picks and not throwing them around willy nilly, but everything has an exception and trying to acquire a franchise QB is one of them. It was an insurance policy, and if you think a QB is worthy a top 3 pick, its a valuable commodity and the insurance premium is going to be high. I posted this the other day, but this guy looked at it a few different ways. http://www.windycitygridiron.com/2017/4/28/15470238/2017-nfl-draft-mitch-trubisky-trade-nobody-got-ripped-off-chicago-bears-value-mock The 99% its better to move down guy again lol? Anyways, very possibly, SF and Chi both win the trade, and the loser is Cle, or someone else who maybe was trying to trade up for Trubisky. If no one else was seriously trying to trade up for Trubisky, then Chi doesn't necessarily quite lose the trade, but did obviously overpay.

FWIW, I think I read the trade was pretty spot on to the traditional trade value chart. I am not the biggest fan of that chart, but it does usually end up being a pretty good representation of actual market value on trades that actually happen. Also, I'm highly skeptical of the idea thrown around that John Lynch "fleeced" Pace or read through his poker face or something; http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/05/01/san-francisco-49ers-nfl-draft-room-bears-trade-reuben-foster-peter-king Who basically sounds about as smart as the average Score caller in this sequence from the Peter King article. Liking Trubisky enough to pick him at three, but drawing the line at the trade is a weird line to draw to me. I'm a fan of valuing mid round picks and not throwing them around willy nilly, but everything has an exception and trying to acquire a franchise QB is one of them. It was an insurance policy, and if you think a QB is worthy a top 3 pick, its a valuable commodity and the insurance premium is going to be high.

Oh, I also meant to post the 8 highly rated prospects with less than 30 Games played. All two year starters except Brock Osweilier (the only non-round 1 guy), so depending on how you want to frame the criteria, Cam Newton is either 12.5% to 100% of this data set. Jameis Winston Johnny Manziel Brock Osweiler Cam Newton Blaine Gabbert Mark Sanchez Alex Smith Aaron Rodgers Edit- I guess Sanchez was only a 16 game starter, and I missed Tannehill because of the position switch- he was really a one year QB starter.

So it turns out this is a really hard question to answer... but I wanted to try and look at this. The issues I ran into searching on sports-reference; -Can't run the search function past 2001 for CFB, and so you basically can only get any multi-year or career data from 2003 onwards. -each data set is only 200 results long, so I had to run a few sets with different criteria, leaving me with a pool of 600 "applicants" once I got too lazy to run more -college stats don't differentiate between games and games started. So Mr Trubisky himself shows up with 30 Games So anyways on the NFL side of things I also limited this search to Rds 1-3. I'm not really interested in a one year college starter who was drafted in the 5th round as I'm assuming there were other talent deficiencies that dropped them. An untalented college QB who started 13 games doesn't provide a very good profile for a talented college QB who started 13 games. It just adds a lot of noise on both sides of the dataset, IMO. Anyways, I was left with 81 draft picks. 13 were dropped because I couldn't match them with my college dataset. So they were either non FBS (Wentz, Garrapolo) or didn't rank in the top 600 college passers in Passer Efficiency with at least 120 PA between 2000-present (FYI Mitchell is 37th by this ranking at 157.6 compared to the 600th entry at 126.7, for context). These 13 are Carson Wentz, Christian Hackenberg, Jimmy Garoppolo, EJ Manuel, Jake Locker, Josh Freeman, Joe Flacco, Kevin O'Connell, Trent Edwards, Tarvaris Jackson, Charlie Whitehurst, Kyle Boller, Josh McCown. After those 13 I also dropped some pre-2003 guys since I couldn't get career data for these guys. This was an additional 5, leaving me with 63 over 13 drafts... obviously not a very large dataset, even including the 8 guys from the most recent drafts, who are early to grade still. So let's look at the list of guys who had less than 30 games than Mitchell had, which of course does include Cam Newton; It's 8 guys. So, I guess we're already batting 12.5%? I mean ignoring that this data set of guys with limited college starts but highly rated as prospects is incredibly small (at least in the past 15 years)... maybe we're already doing better than you thought? Looked at another way, of the other 55 remaining, if you find less than 7 at or better than Cam's production, you're doing worse with the "many games played" data set. Without any further context, that list for you to find 7 or more from; Jared Goff Paxton Lynch Jacoby Brissett Cody Kessler Marcus Mariota Garrett Grayson Sean Mannion Blake Bortles Teddy Bridgewater Derek Carr Geno Smith Mike Glennon Andrew Luck Robert Griffin III Ryan Tannehill Brandon Weeden Russell Wilson Nick Foles Christian Ponder Andy Dalton Colin Kaepernick Ryan Mallett Sam Bradford Tim Tebow Jimmy Clausen Colt McCoy Matthew Stafford Pat White Matt Ryan Brian Brohm Chad Henne JaMarcus Russell Brady Quinn Kevin Kolb John Beck Drew Stanton Vince Young Matt Leinart Jay Cutler Kellen Clemens Brodie Croyle Jason Campbell Charlie Frye Andrew Walter David Greene Eli Manning Philip Rivers Ben Roethlisberger J.P. Losman Matt Schaub Carson Palmer Byron Leftwich Rex Grossman Dave Ragone Chris Simms -rough guess, it's close. Now maybe you don't want me to use third rounders, or second rounders on a guy who we used the 3rd overall and an additional 3 picks to acquire. And we run into trying to build a profile off an even smaller data set than an already small one. Ironically you are also bumping up the hit rate of the "low games played" group, though. If we only use first rounders, the 'hit rate' is 1/7. Only top 10, 1/5. Top 5, 1/4. (yes, all the rest of these guys have much more Games started, despite the similar/less Games played. Overall though it get's kinda messy while not really being useful either. So, the whole 13 starts thing does introduce risk, which jersey pointed out yesterday, since we don't have as much tape to get comfortable with. And actually the risk element is a pretty big complaint of mine from this draft (whether its games started, school size/competition, or injury). And at this point, we can probably point to a high risk/reward drafting style from Pace combined with a spread it around, risk averse FA style. Better or worse, Pace is swinging for the fences with his draft picks, and he's gonna play it safe in FA, at least with external guys. Too soon to really say how he'll operate retaining guys since we've only had one worth a damn. Anyways, that's my long way of answering that; Is a pointless and dumb and impossible question to answer.

Guys, Solomon Thomas could be the next JJ Watt or the next Courtney Brown. HARD PASS.

:shock: whoa

People who wanted to wait didn't believe any of these guys met their criteria. Then why not just say that? No need to bring up next years class?

Its less of a crapshoot than a QB in rounds 2 through 4 (let alone anything after that which isnt even worth mentioning). Sure, its fair to question him on everything. I'm not sold, but I hate this crap about next year.

Whats this crap about 1st round QBs being a crap shoot. Its a lot better than any other round. Also whos cares about next years class. You don't get to draft class worth of guys, youre drafting one guy. If that guy meets your criteria, why would you wait?