20/20 Hindsight - Cam Meredith

Rory Sparrow

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not happening..I'll take a bet on it.

tenor.gif

Already have one avatar bet re: David Montgomery...but I'm willing to take on other action if you are.
 

rawdawg

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I still say, I would have personally held onto Meredith. Worst case scenario, Wims isn't drafted in the 7th last year. Which would have been fine considering he didn't get much PT last year, and the Bears were able to get Riley Ridley and Emanuel Hall this year. Meredith would have been the proverbial, bird in the hand.
 

gilder121

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I genuinely want to know.

What was it about Cam Meredith that inspired you to believe he was clearly a WR1/WR2 in the NFL?
Because you asked. And to be clear, my emotion is pretty much out of it at this point. I enjoy analysis, so if this wasn't enjoyable for me to dive more deeply into, I would just let it go.

I don't have the same recollection of him racking up all of his stats in garbage time. I looked it up to see and when the Bears were ahead in 2016 he accounted for 20% of passing yardage, when they were behind, he accounted for 26%. That's probably material, but hardly enough to raise a red flag to me on his overall production. He was WR 36 in the NFL in 2016. We all knew he was injured in 2017, but even at $3 million he would have been paid at around wr 60 money which is also slightly misleading because a number of higher performing receivers are on rookie contracts (where there is an additional premium of draft capital paid that isn't accounted for in a pure cap space analysis).

To further illustrate this, his last healthy year with the Bears he had 888 yards. If you look at non-rookie contracts of guys earning between 2.5 and 3.5 million cap salary last year (2nd round tender was 3 million), the average receiving yards was 311 with a high of Michael Crabtree at 607 yards.

When you look at vets between 1.5 and 2.5 cap salary in 2018 (original round tender was 2 million), average yardage is 240 with a high of Willie Snead at 651 yards.

So 71 yards difference between the two tender amounts or 4.4 yards per game. Maybe Pace thought he was in a window that small, but with hindsight he clearly didn't mind losing Cam, I just don't know why he got tendered at all then. Unless you think you are hitting a window of 4.4 yards per game, the right options were to either not tender him at all, or tender him at the 2nd round. Tendering him at the original round meant either 1) Pace had a VERY narrow window of his value OR 2) He misread the market.
 
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Rory Sparrow

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So 71 yards difference between the two tender amounts or 4.4 yards per game. Maybe Pace thought he was in a window that small, but with hindsight he clearly didn't mind losing Cam, I just don't know why he got tendered at all then. Unless you think you are hitting a window of 4.4 yards per game, the right options were to either not tender him at all, or tender him at the original round. Tendering him at the original round meant either 1) Pace had a VERY narrow window of his value OR 2) He misread the market.

Yes, I said the same thing at the time. Pace's 'tendering' of Meredith and still letting him go for peanuts made no sense. If Pace thought Meredith would always be 'damaged goods', then why tender him in the first place?
 

FoCo

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Yes, I said the same thing at the time. Pace's 'tendering' of Meredith and still letting him go for peanuts made no sense. If Pace thought Meredith would always be 'damaged goods', then why tender him in the first place?
I think the Bears are showing players across the league that if they come play for the Bears and suffer an injury they will still take care of them. Just like paying Zach Miller a million dollars knowing full well he wasn't going to play.

Maybe Pace said I'll give you 2 million dollars for next year even though you won't play because we take care of our own. But if there is some dumb ass team that thinks you will play and pay you more then you should go and get it.
 

gilder121

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I think the Bears are showing players across the league that if they come play for the Bears and suffer an injury they will still take care of them. Just like paying Zach Miller a million dollars knowing full well he wasn't going to play.

Maybe Pace said I'll give you 2 million dollars for next year even though you won't play because we take care of our own. But if there is some dumb ass team that thinks you will play and pay you more then you should go and get it.
It could be, but he was paid throughout 2017 without playing. At some point you need to pay the guys that are actually helping the team win. One full year on IR seems like enough to me.
 

Mdbearz

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Shows you how starved Bears fan wear/are for a great WR, that people were freaking out about a UDFA with one year of 800 yard receiving and the only reason he was even on the field was due to our entire WR core going down.
Could not agree more, he was the shining corn in an otherwise shitty WR corp and we thought he was more than just shit...myself included.

I today's roster, I'm not sure he makes the 53 considering his health issues.
 

Bearly

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Starved or not, preinjury, he was a solid NFL #2.
 

modo

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I don't think there is anything conclusive to say that Meredith was a solid anything. He was a bright spot on the roster, but that isn't saying much. I guess someone had to get receiving yards, why not him. He had one good year. That isn't a whole lot to go on from an UDFA.

I fell into the group of wanting Meredith back simply because we didn't know what a good receiver was and we were subjected to 2017's roster of receivers.
 

botfly10

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I went after Windy about it back when he was being hyped, and I genuinely want to know.

What was it about Cam Meredith that inspired you to believe he was clearly a WR1/WR2 in the NFL?

I liked his contributions, I liked him, but I saw him as an above average WR who could be our WR3/WR4 and slide up into WR2 in case of injury.

He had one big year where he padded stats because he was just the only WR healthy who was worth throwing to, and even then you never saw him do anything spectacular.

He never demolished any top corners or burned defenses consistently or made circus catches or broke tackles and outran the defense for big TDs or big yards to get 1st downs.

He ran solid routes and generally caught what was thrown his way, which is a great guy to have as depth, but not really what you pine for in a WR1 or WR2 IMO.

I just never understood what people saw in him that I was missing, and I never will, assuming it existed, because the ACL injury has ruined his career it seems.

Easy.

It wasn't anything about Meredith particularly. Other then some flashes of competence.

But the real answer is desperation. Bears were desperate for talent at WR and had been for like 10 (20?) years previously. When fans are desperate, they start seeing phantom talent and start getting attached to random fringe players because they are unknown and provide some sliver of hope to stave off the desperation.

Its not unique to the bears at all, but certainly is a tradition here. Especially when it comes to WRs or QBs.
 

Bearly

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It had little to do with talent. Cam had some. It was the injury and Pace was willing to redshirt him a year for 1.9M but not 2.9M. May have sent him to another surgeon for a cleanup as well. Remember that Cam went to his own guy for the fix and the Bear had doubts about the soundness of the result. Those that wanted to hate, thought Pace came up with a convenient lie that unfortunately for Cam, proved to be absolutely true. I just hope Cam didn't fuck himself by trying to play through it.
 

DrGonzo

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Bears fans have a pretty long list of WRs who were going to be big, but I guess when you look at M. Robinson and M. Booker you've also had success with those under the radar players.
My favorite was Mark Bradley. I really thought he was gonna be a superstar but after he got hurt his career went nowhere.
 

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My favorite was Mark Bradley. I really thought he was gonna be a superstar but after he got hurt his career went nowhere.

Devin Aromashadu is a top ten bears WR. Change my mind
 

SugarWalls

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What’s crazy about the story of cam Meredith is that there were posters on here buying into the hype that he was AHEAD of schedule on his rehab as reported by the saints docs. People were shocked that Cam was participating in the all important receiver drills while Allen Robinson was being held out.

Here we are a year later and unfortunately it looks like Cam is not so far ahead of schedule.

Edit: I also seem to recall a few posters on here ( @number51 @remydat ) that were particularly butt hurt when certain doctor went online a said that he had a good feeling that Cam was in fact NOT ahead of schedule. The butt hurt ensued for pages and there were days where Remydat was forced to learn the differences between a tendon and a ligament.

Imagine being soooooo butt hurt that a doctor would post on a message board that your response is to flame him and call him a liar!
 
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