Bears 2021 cap space is scary

[remydat]

Maybe, but Hicks will be 31 next year. At any rate, I think this is ultimately the choice the FO will have to make.

Hicks will also be cheaper. I dont think Hicks impacts ARob as they can restructure to lower his cap.

The decision is really Leno, Massie, Graham, Skrine, etc as would likely need to cut several players to sign ARob unless cap is not as affected by Covid as anticipated.

 

[nc0gnet0]

Hicks will also be cheaper. I dont think Hicks impacts ARob as they can restructure to lower his cap.

The decision is really Leno, Massie, Graham, Skrine, etc as would likely need to cut several players to sign ARob unless cap is not as affected by Covid as anticipated.

LOL, no. You have to realize you need to replace the players you cut, so the savings you gain by the cuts your suggesting is nil.

 

[remydat]

LOL, no. You have to realize you need to replace the players you cut, so the savings you gain by the cuts your suggesting is nil.

No because Graham and Skrine already have replacements on the team in Kmet and Shelley/Vidor. That is why you draft.

The OL you replace via the upcoming draft which means they will be cheaper. You probably also draft another WR if you are smart.

If we still have to pay Graham and Skrine then it means our drafting has once again sucked as there is no excuse for Kmet and one of Shelley/Vidor not to be able to replace them.

Good teams replace expensive vets with people on rookie deals.

 

[Burque]

No because Graham and Skrine already have replacements on the team in Kmet and Shelley/Vidor. That is why you draft.

The OL you replace via the upcoming draft which means they will be cheaper. You probably also draft another WR if you are smart.

If we still have to pay Graham and Skrine then it means our drafting has once again sucked as there is no excuse for Kmet and one of Shelley/Vidor not to be able to replace them.

Good teams replace expensive vets with people on rookie deals.

And those vets in turn get big contracts other places which gives us more draft capital to work with.

 

[nc0gnet0]

No because Graham and Skrine already have replacements on the team in Kmet and Shelley/Vidor. That is why you draft.

The OL you replace via the upcoming draft which means they will be cheaper. You probably also draft another WR if you are smart.

If we still have to pay Graham and Skrine then it means our drafting has once again sucked as there is no excuse for Kmet and one of Shelley/Vidor not to be able to replace them.

Good teams replace expensive vets with people on rookie deals.

Stupidity.

Your going to replace both your starting LT and RT with rookies?

Might I ask what round you plan on picking them up?

What are your plans for QB?

 

[remydat]

Stupidity.

Your going to replace both your starting LT and RT with rookies?

Might I ask what round you plan on picking them up?

What are your plans for QB?

Let's start things off on the same page here then we can discuss your specific questions. Do you conceptually understand that some of the guys will be replaced by guys on the roster and that some of them could be replaced by guys in the upcoming draft? As if you can't agree on that point there is no point getting into details.

You came at me with a Lol but then exhibited complete football ignorance regarding the fact that Kmet, Shelley, Vidor, and upcoming draft picks could feel some of these needs rather than a high priced vet. We can certainly discuss how many of them should be filled via draft but let's first agree that some of them can because your initial response showed an extreme lack of understanding of roster construction.

 

[nc0gnet0]

Let's start things off on the same page here then we can discuss your specific questions. Do you conceptually understand that some of the guys will be replaced by guys on the roster and that some of them could be replaced by guys in the upcoming draft? As if you can't agree on that point there is no point getting into details.

You came at me with a Lol but then exhibited complete football ignorance regarding the fact that Kmet, Shelley, Vidor, and upcoming draft picks could feel some of these needs rather than a high priced vet. We can certainly discuss how many of them should be filled via draft but let's first agree that some of them can because your initial response showed an extreme lack of understanding of roster construction.

LMAO, says the guy who just wasted 13+ million in dead cap and now must replace the starting left tackle, starting right tackle, staring DB and starting TE. And while you might argue the replacements for the TE and DB are already on the roster, you still need to either draft or pick up in FA someone to fill their backup roles, plus also need to not hit on one, but two immediate starting caliber Tackles in the draft as well.

Keep explaining it to me Mr. Madden GM

 

[Visionman]

LMAO, says the guy who just wasted 13+ million in dead cap and now must replace the starting left tackle, starting right tackle, staring DB and starting TE. And while you might argue the replacements for the TE and DB are already on the roster, you still need to either draft or pick up in FA someone to fill their backup roles, plus also need to not hit on one, but two immediate starting caliber Tackles in the draft as well.

Keep explaining it to me Mr. Madden GM

If only we had a genius GM like Bobby, and a fat rocket scientist/rapist HC like Patty. Then the right moves could be made for us to win games....right?

oh wait...we are winning.

 

[vabearsfan15]

As much of a staunch supporter I am of Pace, the Quinn contract is not looking very helpful next year. Taking a 14 mil cap hit while also trying to extend Robinson for 18+ mil a year is tough.

We will be able to easily restructure/extend Fuller as well as make some cost-saving moves on the O-Line, but it will be hard to find much more room. If anyone will give us table scraps for our tackles and be willing to eat some of the dead cap I would take the trade. We could also maybe restructure Graham.

I think there are some creative things we can explore to save money, but at the end of the day it seems more evident we will need a cheap QB on a rookie contract to get us through some of the contracts we are paying out on Defense. Otherwise, we will need to explore trading some of these guys.

 

[vabearsfan15]

If we were forced in a position where we had to trade away some of our veteran defensive players I would look at moving them in this order.

1. Danny Trevathan
2. Buster Skrine
3. Robert Quinn
4. Eddie Goldman
5. Akiem Hicks (wrong side of 30 and could start aging quickly)

Fuller, Jackson and Mack are untouchable unless the Jets are willing to listen to a package deal that includes ONE of them so we can get Trevor Lawrence.

 

[Chris Sojka]

I agree with both Remy and Ncogneto to some degree. Yes you replace players on deals with younger players on rookie deals.

But Graham is producing and seems to like playing here. You could ask him to stay and play opposite Kmet in 2 TE sets.


Vildor, Shelley, and Kmet are all promising looking young guys, DHC should step in as our backup safety. We should draft a true SS eventually. This won’t be that year.

look at things this way. Yes FA might be fucked but a guy like Graham or older guys in the league might become expendable to a lot of teams who need to sign players With the cap coming down. Everyone has to lower their price. You could see a lot of backloaded incentive based contracts.

Jimmy G as purely a 3rd down RZ target is worth 5m a year minimum. You could grab him for 3 years and 25 million and to me that’s a discounted price considering how he has performed.

Extending Mack, Fuller and Hicks should be on the table as well.

That hopefully gets Arob signed.

not everyone is being kept, but you can justify the ones that actually produce.

 

[PrideisBears]

Hicks easily. ARob is a luxury at this point. This draft is expected to be loaded at WR again.

Then you wonder why the bears can't get anywhere on offense ?

 

[remydat]

LMAO, says the guy who just wasted 13+ million in dead cap and now must replace the starting left tackle, starting right tackle, staring DB and starting TE. And while you might argue the replacements for the TE and DB are already on the roster, you still need to either draft or pick up in FA someone to fill their backup roles, plus also need to not hit on one, but two immediate starting caliber Tackles in the draft as well.

Keep explaining it to me Mr. Madden GM

This doesn't answer the question. Do you conceptually understand that some of the guys will be replaced by guys on the roster and that some of them could be replaced by guys in the upcoming draft? As if you can't agree on that point there is no point getting into details.

 

[remydat]

I agree with both Remy and Ncogneto to some degree. Yes you replace players on deals with younger players on rookie deals.

But Graham is producing and seems to like playing here. You could ask him to stay and play opposite Kmet in 2 TE sets.


Vildor, Shelley, and Kmet are all promising looking young guys, DHC should step in as our backup safety. We should draft a true SS eventually. This won’t be that year.

look at things this way. Yes FA might be fucked but a guy like Graham or older guys in the league might become expendable to a lot of teams who need to sign players With the cap coming down. Everyone has to lower their price. You could see a lot of backloaded incentive based contracts.

Jimmy G as purely a 3rd down RZ target is worth 5m a year minimum. You could grab him for 3 years and 25 million and to me that’s a discounted price considering how he has performed.

Extending Mack, Fuller and Hicks should be on the table as well.

That hopefully gets Arob signed.

not everyone is being kept, but you can justify the ones that actually produce.

JG is a luxury a team with salary cap issues can't afford. Again you if draft Kmet and still have to carry JG then you fucked up. Also Graham's cap hit is 10 million next year. It would be stupid to carry a 2nd TE for 10 million. Equally stupid IMO would be giving a 34 year old TE who is just a RZ threat a new 3 year deal and the idea that Graham would take a pay cut after a year where you just said he was worth his contract is extremely odd. If he finishes with 8-10 TDs, his agent should be fired if he then signs on for 5 million a year instead of the 10 million he is set to make next year.

Extending Fuller and Hicks does not get your ARob. We are 5 million in the hole. Those extensions likely net us something like 5-10 million in cap space which means we still would only have 0-5 million in cap space. Once you take out rookie pool that does us down more. You can't extend Mack as after this year, he still has 4 years left on his deal that takes him to age 33. Extending him makes no sense. The best you can do is convert base salary into signing bonus and spread that over the remaining for years. So if you took say 12 million of 2021 17 million salary and converted in to SB then the cap hit in 2021 goes down from 26 million to about 17 million. The problem is his cap hit in 2022 and beyond goes all the way up to 30 million so you just fucking yourself later.

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I would suggest anyone talking about this to play with the above. You can cut, restructure or make whatever moves you want and it calculates the cap effect. Right now we are 5 million over the projected cap. So make your moves and explain how you are going to find the money to sign ARob because some of you talking about just extending one or 2 people and think that solves it. It doesn't. If you want ARob then you will need to cut some guys. That is the reality.

 

[remydat]

Then you wonder why the bears can't get anywhere on offense ?

I don't wonder at all. We can't get anywhere on offense because our QBs suck and Pace has been terrible at drafting offensive talent.

 

[dennehy]

Where do the Bears get money?

They don't really have anyone who is tradable on their current deal other than Hicks and Fuller, who I think they will likely keep. Maybe Miller but I don't think he gets much in return.

Fuller is a no-brainer extension and you can probably cut his cap number from $20m to $10m while extending him through 2024, when he will be 32-33. No reason he can't be very good through then.

Hicks is tougher. He's 30 already and is a big guy. It's likely that his play begins to decline in the next few years. Does he take a slightly undermarket deal in exchange for the security of more guaranteed money (he's under contract next year but no guaranteed $). Could you turn his 1 year $11m deal with $0 gtd into $24mil/3 years $17gtd or something like that? Tough call.

Mack has so much $ already pushed down the line via 2 restructures that there just isn't really much blood to squeeze from that stone. Although I wouldn't put it past Pace. He's been pretty reckless in that regard the last couple years.

Cuts: I think one of Leno or Massie is gone. Difficult to say based on draft, but Leno is the bigger problem imo. If Kmet continues to improve and mature I think getting rid of Graham makes sense. Not sure why Pace put $3m in guarantees for him in 21. Didn't seem necessary. Skrine can go if Vildor is ready. There really aren't any other meaningful cuts.

All in all they should be able to squeeze $25-30m or so and a bit more if they have to. But there are also going to a lot of question marks among the starters and relatively few players under contract, which means lots of cap will get soaked up by small contracts to fill the roster. I think with a few likely cuts they will only be at like 30 players under contract for next year.

 

[dennehy]

JG is a luxury a team with salary cap issues can't afford. Again you if draft Kmet and still have to carry JG then you fucked up. Also Graham's cap hit is 10 million next year. It would be stupid to carry a 2nd TE for 10 million. Equally stupid IMO would be giving a 34 year old TE who is just a RZ threat a new 3 year deal and the idea that Graham would take a pay cut after a year where you just said he was worth his contract is extremely odd. If he finishes with 8-10 TDs, his agent should be fired if he then signs on for 5 million a year instead of the 10 million he is set to make next year.

Extending Mack, Fuller and Hicks does not get your ARob. We are 5 million in the hole. Those extensions likely net us something like 10-15 million in cap space which means we still would only have 5-10 million in cap space. Once you take out rookie pool that does us down to like 2.5-7.5 million in cap space.

Chicago Bears Salary Cap Calculator | Over The Cap

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I would suggest anyone talking about this to play with the above. You can cut, restructure or make whatever moves you want and it calculates the cap effect. Right now we are 5 million over the projected cap. So make your moves and explain how you are going to find the money to sign ARob because some of you talking about just extending one or 2 people and think that solves it. It doesn't. If you want ARob then you will need to cut some guys. That is the reality.

It will be $5mil under the cap with the current rollover iirc. But this year especially no one really knows what the cap is going to be.

 

[remydat]

Where do the Bears get money?

They don't really have anyone who is tradable on their current deal other than Hicks and Fuller, who I think they will likely keep. Maybe Miller but I don't think he gets much in return.

Fuller is a no-brainer extension and you can probably cut his cap number from $20m to $10m while extending him through 2024, when he will be 32-33. No reason he can't be very good through then.

Hicks is tougher. He's 30 already and is a big guy. It's likely that his play begins to decline in the next few years. Does he take a slightly undermarket deal in exchange for the security of more guaranteed money (he's under contract next year but no guaranteed $). Could you turn his 1 year $11m deal with $0 gtd into $24mil/3 years $17gtd or something like that? Tough call.

Mack has so much $ already pushed down the line via 2 restructures that there just isn't really much blood to squeeze from that stone. Although I wouldn't put it past Pace. He's been pretty reckless in that regard the last couple years.

Cuts: I think one of Leno or Massie is gone. Difficult to say based on draft, but Leno is the bigger problem imo. If Kmet continues to improve and mature I think getting rid of Graham makes sense. Not sure why Pace put $3m in guarantees for him in 21. Didn't seem necessary. Skrine can go if Vildor is ready. There really aren't any other meaningful cuts.

All in all they should be able to squeeze $25-30m or so and a bit more if they have to. But there are also going to a lot of question marks among the starters and relatively few players under contract, which means lots of cap will get soaked up by small contracts to fill the roster. I think with a few likely cuts they will only be at like 30 players under contract for next year.

A fully extension likely has to still have an APY of 14m or greater ie what he is currently making as there is no reason for him to accept less. With that as the basis, it is unlikely you can cut his cap hit 2 10 million without blowing it up in future years.

He already has SB of 6 million next year so even if you tried to give him the vet minimum of around 2 million in base for 2021, you still end up with over 10 million because you likely have to give him anther signing bonus and there is no way he would take say just an 8m signing bonus to get to 10 million (6m existing SB + 2m base + 2m pro-rate new SB assuming 4 years). The math just doesn't work. More likely you are looking at being able to reduce his cap hit to something like 14-16 million.

For Hicks I did a 3 year extension that basically made it a 4 year 32 million deal so 8 million APY compared to 12 million APY on his current deal. He may accept given his age but combined that again only really gives you about 10 million in space.

 

[remydat]

It will be $5mil under the cap with the current rollover iirc. But this year especially no one really knows what the cap is going to be.

Yeah I am using OTC which has us 5 million. They may not have factored in the roll-over though and they have us at 8 million of cap left so that would be about 3 million under. That is using their projected salary cap of 176 million.

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So yeah unless the cap is more than expected, there is no really way to pay for ARob without cutting a few guys.

 

[dennehy]

A fully extension likely has to still have an APY of 14m or greater ie what he is currently making as there is no reason for him to accept less. With that as the basis, it is unlikely you can cut his cap hit 2 10 million without blowing it up in future years.

He already has SB of 6 million next year so even if you tried to give him the vet minimum of around 2 million in base for 2021, you still end up with over 10 million because you likely have to give him anther signing bonus and there is no way he would take say just an 8m signing bonus to get to 10 million (6m existing SB + 2m base + 2m pro-rate new SB assuming 4 years). The math just doesn't work. More likely you are looking at being able to reduce his cap hit to something like 14-16 million.

For Hicks I did a 3 year extension that basically made it a 4 year 32 million deal so 8 million APY compared to 12 million APY on his current deal. He may accept given his age but combined that again only really gives you about 10 million in space.

If you're talking about Fuller in the first paragraph, you can get it to about 10. Make it $64/4 years/$36gtd, 10-15-17-22 or something like that. Very little gtd in the last year. And if the cap does get decimated next year it will bounce back more in 2022. Fuller isn't likely to get much more than that gtd after next year or when ever.

His signing bonus has already been paid, it doesn't matter to him, just the cap. The current SB amount can be rolled into the next deal, amortized, and he can get paid a ton of money up front. That's the attractive part of an extension for a team and player. Another round of amortization and payment up front.

I don't think they will extend Hicks for three years past next year. And you can easily lower Hicks's cap hit if you give him a deal like the one you suggest. 6-8-8-10 with all the guarantee in the first three years. That lowers his hit by $6m next year.