WrigleyField 22

What if they built the entire team from shortstop?

Yea I'm down pretty bad on having expectations for the Cubs. Prove me wrong!

Kind of want to make CU my adopted college team (I never have had a fave NCAA program). He may flame out, but I think it's gonna be entertaining to follow no matter what. And if I'm lucky BigTen will want that Denver market and I'll even get good media coverage in a few years.

Deion gonna be binge-ing on former 4 and 5 stars.

He can compete with Jones. Bears still need a big FA add at OT. Also, it was 10 snaps so...

Couple UDFA with the standout D grades. I've been skeptical about Sanborn as the starter for next year, but he just keeps making the case.

horsefeathers, trying to run my comps for Kmet and it's tough. Might have to upgrade my expectations here though. He's probably a 10M AAV guy, though comps are all less than perfect. Lot of guys getting paid lately probably got paid on flashier tools and potential. But Kmet still one of the youngest TEs in league so even though he doesn't have flashy combine like metrics, he has a potential case.

Completely agree. I'm excited about the cap space and high draft pick and all of that but like 90% of the Bears roster is currently marginal NFL talent. They have a lot to fix. You can rebuild quickly in the NFL, but Poles will need to have a very high hit rate IMO to be a contender next year. But its interesting that there's this conflict between Poles taking time to add pieces through the draft and FA and building out the roster to be set for long term success and the ticking clock that is Fields' rookie contract. My guess is that Poles would prefer to be slow and deliberate, but you also have to try to take advantage of an elite QB on a rookie deal because that dude is getting paid eventually. It's not even that IMO. He actually can't take his time because he has way too much money that HAS to be spent this offseason. Be one thing if he could just hand out extensions but there's not much on this team to extend (traded away 1 major extension candidate) and players with less than 3 years can't even be extended. He can want to be slow and deliberate all he wants, but he put himself into a situation where that's not even possible. I may run some extension estimates, but yea, I don't think there's a ton there. Like, I'm not sure Claypool and Mooney should get even more than Courtland Sutton money and at that price they may balk. Jaylon Johnson could be a big number since he's a corner, but there should probably be some legit doubt about an early extension for him, especially if it takes top 5 money. No on Vildor, Gipson. Leaves Kmet who I'd definitely look to extend and think you can reach a fair number for both sides (but it won't be huge).

can you post a screen shot of them, O and D? or is that UM's territory? Counting on umfan because I'm lazy lol. I think theres a reddit that had it each week?

To no surprise, Fields has hit best passing grade of the season from PFF. Scored an 82. Prior season high was 63.5. Second highest passing grade of his career after the Pittsburgh game last year. Overall a 90.4 offense grade. Jones, Whitehair, Kmet, Leatherwood, and Reiff all graded well. Technically Harry had top grade, but that was 5 snaps.

I personally love what Deion is doing and hope NIL is gonna pave the way for way more of this. We're inching closer and closer to stopping pretending NCAA football isn't just any other big business worthy of bring treated like one.

QBs can cover up a whole lot, but step up to contender is still a big hurdle. Look at Herbert in LA. He's been verifiably awesome, and yea they have done injuries too, but they put a lot into the team around him and not getting much better than replacement level results. So the Bears can probably pretty easily improve to a 7-8 win team by just putting a modicum of resources into the team around Fields. But getting to that 11-12 win mark.. A lot can go wrong in between. Heck even with whatever limitations Poles had, I think they coulda put 7-8 win talent around Fields this year and they just mostly punted. So it kind of sets up that expectation where you expect them to just skip any interim step, but that's extremely hard to do. And entering the last year of that cash window, they kind of have to spend like they're trying to contend, so it's gonna reinforce those expectations.

It would seem to me that they could go crazy on free agent signings and then offer up extensions where warranted. Couldn't they also frontload some contracts where needed? If you read through that whole tweet there's some baseline scenarios. But I'd say FA wise, their top 6 signings will account for at least 60-70M in AAV contracts, unless they really go crazy with extensions, but looking at the extension list none of these should get massive deals. But a few mid size ones would chip away.

ESB is kind of fine as a 4th/5th WR, but I'd like to see them give another young day 1 or 2 WR drafted and numbers start to become a problem. And I'd probably give Harry the shot sooner to be that camp bubble vet over ESB.

I agree. 2 mistakes don’t take away from the many good things he did. He looked decisive throwing, confident in the pocket, didn’t need to run too often, don’t think he was sacked, he was really accurate on deep balls and middle of the field stuff. Pending tape review where there's an obvious better throw, it was like 1.5 mistakes at best. It was an anticipation throw where Jaire made a great defensive read and St Brown did nothing to protect the ball.

Well if they do finish 3-14, 3rd is the worst they can fall pick wise and 2 is still in play. Don't see any path to 1. But even if they're 10% chance to win each game that is still like a 35% of finding another win.

Broncos blew it late - would have been big for the reverse standings, as well as the Bears 2nd rounder from Baltimore. Other than Bears losing (which I hate) not a great start to the tank race this week after a very good tank weekend last week.

Neither INT was awful.

I'll like the draft pick come season end but this game sucked in the second half. Hate it.

I'll like the draft pick come season end but this game sucked in the second half. Hate it.

Bleh.

Who says that was full speed? \:D/ I really think it may have been 90%

TANK IS CANCELLED. BURY THE PACKERS. ALL TIME WIN RECORD STAYS IN CHICAGO.

2nd place being whoever loses the conf champ or the highest ranked left in each? Whoever loses the championship game. Winning conference will of course still be a big deal, but takes away a lot of the potential drama of championship week for the average fans who's watching. Sans one of the group of 5 teams blowing it, basically thr playoff slate would be locked up before conference championships. I guess just seeding/byes would be in play?