WrigleyField 22

100% this is me too.

Full stop, that's the worst no call PI I've ever seen. And the one earlier on Jackson was so ticky tack. Anyways, thanks for the draft positioning help, refs. Fields is an unbelievable talent, and he hasn't even put together all the passing components yet. But if he keeps running the ball he's buying himself all the time he needs to continue to develop as a passer. They seemed to throw a lot of quick stuff today and may have been one of Fields better days doing so.

Since this is now the Patterson sit start thread: 1 RB and 1 Flex Patterson v LAC Deon Jackson v NE Joshua Palmer v ATL Rondale Moore v SEA Curtis Samuel v MIN Kenyan Drake v NO

I'm using that extra hour on leaf pickup. Win win

Little Dolphins primer for Sunday

Bears social media is corny as hell. Sometimes it works. This one weird though.

Did I post this here yet?

Yall thinking too small. Those 9 needs I listed are all FA needs, and the top 6 will all be large deals. Allocate like 60-70M AAV for the top 6 spots and then another 10-12 for the next 3. Another dozen minimum or near minimum salary depth resignings and signings after that. Even at that level you'll need at least 2 extensions (Mooney, JJ, Claypool?) to be at the point you'll reach your cash minimum. And they could go bigger accross the board there. But that gets them to their "top 53" pre draft with no absolutely glaring holes. After those 9 primary needs, the draft will supplement or double up those. Only your first rounder is gonna be expected to definitely be a day 1 starter and there will still be plenty of bumpable spots at premium positions.

For external FA it's sometime in mid March. Resigned guys can happen before that. So most good FA are scooped up well before draft, but you'll usually see some older vets hanging around to make a decision on a good contender situation and teams have also started to want to push back signings for comp pick reasons once it gets to a certain point past the initial signing period.

Can't remember if I posted here or not, but I think Fournette/Conner low end and Mixon/Jones high end are a reasonable guess for what Montgomery might demand on the market. It is a strong FA class so I lean towrards him falling on the lower end, but I'd be surprised to see him drop below there. And as long as the guarantees were reasonable I think you can make the case to keep Montgomery at that level investment. So that would be like 21/22 over 3. Mixon/Jones were like 48/4, but are both basically year to year deals with relatively small guarantees. If someone wants to go 4/50 with strong guarantees, then another decent RB should be available at the lower end of the FA market.

Yea, I mean if I thought he was a true workhorse back I'd say Ebner is enough and take RB2 off the list. Could be reupping Montgomery if a reasonable deal is there, but definitely something more than a minimum or day 3 pick behind him.

If the pick is top 5, it's going to be one of Carter, Anderson or Murphy otherwise, if they manage to stay in the 10-15 range, I think Johnston might be in play. Yea if they manage to stay outside of the top 10, a lot more things end up in play. But unless they are top 5, they kind of just need to plug every hole in FA like they don't know what will be there in the draft, because they really won't know. So whoever they use their 1st on will just be a bonus at that point. Major holes entering the offseason WR3 RB2 C (or G depending how they feel about Patrick/Whitehair) OT (with Borom and Jones competing for the other) DE1 (they actually have okay depth, but need a major talent here) DTx2 (only Jones under contract) LBx2 Not every one of those is gonna be a $10M free agent, but if they can get solid vets at those 9 spots (which could include some resigning), the draft becomes wide open to just add star potential wherever.

They're both solid starters on the right offense. There's only a handful of true 1s and then everyone else is scheme and matchup dependent largely. They should absolutely look to draft a WR like every year anyways, but the nice thing about Claypool is I think they can take best WR and not worry about Slot v X v Z too much.

I was gonna go as far as trading for him in one league to really jinx us, but my league mate had no interest. My other league he's actually still available, but I have Hurts and am in it to win it whereas the other league I'm last place and trolling for possible keepers now. Also it's a 6pt passing TD league, so running heavy QBs can be slightly muted value wise. I made a bold move to make Fields a keeper after I owned him last year. I literally came thisclose to dropping him after week 4. Tried to dangle him in a trade but including him actually decreased the value of the trade I was offering in other team's eyes. I think I started Bridgewater over him one week (superflex). But now he's a must start. I always hated owning Bears in fantasy because more often than not they were a disappointment and I hated when they failed my fantasy team and my real life team, but in his case its helping both for once! Hedge all the unders.

I was gonna go as far as trading for him in one league to really jinx us, but my league mate had no interest. My other league he's actually still available, but I have Hurts and am in it to win it whereas the other league I'm last place and trolling for possible keepers now. Also it's a 6pt passing TD league, so running heavy QBs can be slightly muted value wise.

I 100% agree with this and am kind of amazed that even while they mention it being a factor, it's being almost completely discounted in grading the trade by the pundits. The lack of options in FA plus stealing a resource from the Packers makes the grade from me significantly higher than the deal would be in a vacuum. To play devils advocate, if they kept that pick and used it on an overdraft WR instead of best player available, they’d get criticized for it. They didn’t have to put themselves in a position where an overpay for a wr via trade was a viable option, they could have done something to help Fields 6 months ago. They didn’t. They put themselves in a position where they were desperate enough to overpay, and by all accounts, they overpaid. Frankly I’m glad they did it for multiple reasons, but it deserves to be viewed honestly. While I did want them to overpay in FA months ago I can also say that there are parts of Claypool's potential I like a lot more than some of the options 6 months ago (say Kirk) based on where they can line up positionally. Maybe Poles took a bet on finding the right type of receiver. We can look back and say they barely got through 8 weeks of the season like that, but they did and Fields even started to come together a bit without it. But no rule they couldn't do both. It's really funny though, because I started coming across a ton of Jags fans on Twitter complaining they didn't surround Lawrence with enough to give an honest evaluation. And I couldn't imagine blaming Fields supporting cast if the Bears just had a Jaguars offseason (retained a top paid tackle, added a top G, and 3 sizable FA weapons at WR/TE and their prior year 1st round RB back from an injury). Meanwhile Bears have a flyer on a former first round possible bust and Claypool and I'm like, "Let Fields cook baby!". Meanwhile he has a 5th rounder at LT and Mustipher at C still, and their TE hardly is allowed to go run routes because he has to block.

I really think one of Boutte (LSU), Addison (USC) or Smith-Njigba (OSU) will be available when the Bears pick in the 2nd. That's probably gonna be in the back half of the second, are you sure? Briefly heard on the Hoge and Jahns podcast but I think Jahns said he asked the Athletic's NFL draft guy about it and he said the run of 5+ WR in the first will end this year. So I guess not as exciting of a talent pool as past couple years.

I follow PFF Brad on Twitter. He has pretty unbiased analysis even though he is somewhat of a Bears fan. He said giving the Ravens' second would be an overpay. I think he said Khan "fleeced" Poles by getting the Bears' second instead. I think everyone feels like it's an overpay, but so is free agency. Why, because you have to have the best offer to get what you want. I'm overall encouraged that more resources are going to the offense instead of defense to right what has been a franchise-long wrong to some extent. Oh, also, I listen to no one from ESPN. It is the network of who can scream the loudest. Not interested in that. Brad is one of my favorite follows. But I immediately noticed that the trade chart he developed basically calls the 2nd round difference the value of a 7th. I didn't directly @ him about it, but someone eventually did. Kind of funny.

Wow so Quinn pulled a Tony Snell. Impressive.

Obviously he'll get his bye in week 14, but with all this trade activity I was wondering... Has a guy ever started more than 16 games (pre 2021) or is anyone slated to start 18 games this year because they didn't catch either end of the bye and got traded?

As long as Poles doesn't have to be convinced of the same. Pretty funny though that Ballard wasn't apparently in the business of top 8 LB, but a Guard? No problem!

I'd still pick WR in the first 2 rounds. Actually still leaning toward 1st round. I think you can find OL and DL in Free agency. The Bears still don't have a stud #1 WR. Best way is to take one and take one early in the draft. Assuming that they finish top 10 there really are like 3 positions, and maybe a 4th in play : WR, DE, OT. Maybe DT if he's a perfect 3T who's very highly rated. If there isn't value at those spots, just trade down. But I hope they do enough in FA not to feel forced toward any one spot at the top of the draft.

I doubt he's in consideration for C, but at least helps the IOL depth once he's back.

Yeah, I think this is all coming together. I know people were skeptical about what the team thought about Fields being that they gave him nothing to work with. I know people were skeptical about the defensive coaching hire. But as I said all offseason, I think Poles believed in Fields, he just wasn't going to bet his career on him succeeding by going HAM year 1. Fields has shown enough, so far. And the defensive hire makes sense now that they are seemingly going all-in on Fields. Poles will hopefully add the talent there. Eberflus will be able to get the talent and mold them the way he wants. Sunday really opened my eyes. IDK if I said this here or twitter, but we all want Fields to throw 50 times in a game to see what happens, and Dallas was the opportunity to do so. They were behind big, he was playing well. But they didn't because I really felt for the first time they were protecting him from a fierce pass rush instead of protecting him from mistakes or playing to not lose. Taking him out of the game late really sealed the deal that they were doing this. I actually smiled when I saw Siemien on the field. This staff knows they can't drop Fields back 50 times and keep him upright all season. 100% agree on all this.

To play devil's advocate, we saw this approach under Trestman. Best offense the Bears have had and a historically bad defense ruined the season. The Bears have a ways to go to get to a 20ppg, 5 y/p defense after losing Roquan. Quinn isn't a big factor, but Smith was....and they already needed pretty much everything else on the front 7. But yeah, I don't care about a crippled defense in a rebuilding season. But they are going to have to put significant resources into that side of the ball this offseason as well. Not just on the offensive side. I think he's just talking about this season. No way Eberflus is going to be happy with an all offense/no defense team long term. I mean no one should. Most SB winners are like top 10 in both. As long as they aren't meatball "D first this is Chicago bears football baby" derp it's fine.