Realistically I don't see Hicks, Goldman, or Quinn still on the team to start the '23-24 season. We'll see what happens this year, but I'm not even certain 2 of those 3 will still be in the NFL for that season. Unless Jackson returns to form, he may be out too. Bears cap situation is complicated - Pace had an unfortunate habit of backloading gauranteed money on his large contracts to lower cap hits the year of signing. The covid "rogue wave" cap drop has punished the Bears a bit for that practice. It may be in their best interest to just bite the bullet before the '22-23 season and cut a lot of the dead weight. Theres likely to be a large pop in cap after '21-22 so that gives you some room to pay whatever excess dead money that comes from the cuts.
Going forward I think Pace needs to apply his strategy at addressing S the last few seasons to the entire defense. He pays a (alleged) star at the position big money, but then kind of barrel scrapes to find the best "just some guy" he can to put next to his star. He needs to apply that to all levels of the defense. This team can't afford to have 2 OLBS with 8 figure cap hits, they can't afford to have a $10M NT next to a $12M DE in HIcks. They can't afford to pay a Trevathan big money to ultimately be "the other ILB next to Roquan Smith". He's going to have to start filling a lot of these positions with cheaper contract guys - so look for reclamation projects that out play their "prove it" contract or you hit on rookies who play above their rookie contract. Hell he should have already been doing that - Trevathan was a luxury they couldnt afford when they resigned him over KPL and they doubly cant afford his contract now.
The highest $ positions on defense are CBs and EDGE - Bears have a lot of promising youth at DB but for EDGE you just have Gipson for youth. Hope Gipson takes a massive step forward this year because so far he looks like he may be "just some guy" - which isn't the worst thing for the player but the Bears desparately need youth at that position that shows the potential to replace what Quinn was supposed to be here. Pace does have a really decent string of reclamation successes with both the SS position and moreso the DL - Nick Williams, Mario Edwards, Brent Urban, etc. i'm pretty confident in his ability to find cheap decent guys to replace Hicks/Goldman/maybe Nichols depending on cost to resign. Its really hard to replace the production of a prime goldman and hicks with anyone, let alone from the discount rack, but the Bears are in a cap position where they have to be happy to get 75% of the player for 25% of the cost.
