philibusters

I think you are selling Dak short. I think Dak is a very good system QB. You put him in structure and he can operate at a high level. That said if you put him bad situations where the O-Line is blocking poorly he has poor receivers he struggles because making plays outside of structure are not his strong suit. In a sense I think he is similar to Cousins.

I think all three of those guys would improve the team. I kind of wish the draft happened before free agency so we knew who we got in the draft before making free agency decisions. Hunter is a great player and is probably slightly better than either Montez or Chase. He turned 29 on Sunday so he is not old. Obviously you don't want to give him like a 5 year deal with lots of guaranteed money, but if you could get him on a three year contract where maybe 3/4ths of the money is guaranteed--we would once again have a top 5 D-Line on paper. I know some people don't want to spend a lot on the D-Line considering what we have invested in Allen and Payne, but I am not against Hunter. That said, I would the fourth starter to either be a cheap veteran like James Smith WIlliams or alternative be like a second round pick on a rookie contract. Brad Speilberger projected Danielle Hunter at 3 years 67 million with 37 guaranteed (see link below) and I would be interested if he does end up in that range. That would make me do more research. I agree that Evans gives you a big physical WR, a skill set we don't really have in our WR corps. As you say he is 30 going into his age 31 season, so I don't want to pay top dollar, but if you can get him on the right deal, I think he could be a huge asset. I am thinking in 3 year 40 million range--50 million tops---and that may be completely unrealistic because he may go for 3 years 70 million like McLaurin. Because WR's tend to decline in their 30's I wouldn't pay top dollar and that means I probably wouldn't sign him, but if for some reason an opportunity to get him a fairly reasonably price arose, I would go for it. Brad Speilberger projected Evans at 3 years 63 million 42 guaranteed and that would be out of my price range for Evans, though I like him as a player and if that went down to about 50 million I would be interested. Azeez Al Shaiir is another interesting option. I think we need to add multiple LB'ers especially if we don't bring Cody Barton back or even if we do (I am skeptical of bring Barton back as a starter, but would be fine as bringing him back as the top backup). I really wish we had just brought Cole Holcomb back to be honest. In terms of Azeez Al Shaair maybe give him 3 years 15 million with about 9 million guaranteed is the ball park I would be looking at. If we brought in him, brought back Barton and Hudson, and drafted a rookie in the fourth round, I feel like we could have a solid LB'er corp that was 5 strong. https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-projecting-veteran-extension-candidates-mike-evans-chris-jones-2023

I don't disagree. It is just a debate where probably any strong take probably is not warranted.

I would not say Dax Milne was a good pick, but he wasn't a bad pick. He was the second to last pick of the entire draft (a 7th round compensatory pick). He probably very mildly exceeded expectations.

The interesting thing we flipped with the Rams who didn't play last night. The Rams played the Steelers and the Steelers winning added to their strength of schedule

Sadly Philly's pass defense is ahead of our own. Philly is 27 out of 32 and we are 29 out of 32 (though I only went by total yards, not yards per game, so byes are not factored in).

Maybe, but if a QB needy team gets that first pick, its unlikely to be on the table for a trade.

You could get Kaiir Elam for a compensatory third. The Bills are pretty much out on him.

I would say win rate is probably a more predictive stat for the future than sacks. Though in fairness, at no point in his career prior to this year did Young have a win rate close to 20%. 12% is average for a DE and prior to this year he was pretty close to that if I recall, maybe like 1% higher or something like that. Then this year happened, but I think he has benefitted from going against weak competition. For example, against the Giants he was against Justin Pugh who they had just signed two weeks earlier and had always been a guard. I don't expect he would be able to maintain a 20% + win rate. That said sacks are not always that predictive. I think close to half of D-Lineman sacks are schemed up where the D-Line creates a mismatch (a RB or TE on a D-Lineman) or the players get completely unblocked. And sometimes you will get like a weird outliner season where a player who never had more than 8 sacks gets 14 but upon further review like 10 of them were schemed up. I do think you see slightly more schemed up sacks in 3-4 defense than 4-3 defenses where in general the offense has a slightly better feel where people are coming from. But yeah in the draft thread somebody mentioned a DE from ODU has 15 sacks in 8 games and my first thought was that is really impressive, but second thought was I'd like to see the data on those sacks. Or they schemed up, are they clean up sacks, or they quick pass rush wins.

You would not expect to go up 9.4 million because we signed two new guys to the roster. Granted they are going to be cheap players, but you expect to go up like 8 million.

Young has the 5th highest pass rush win rate in the NFL this season. I do agree that he is undisciplined (both as a pass rusher and run defender), but I feel like fans perspective has veered way off course since he was traded. He was playing reasonably well this year. Did Ron actually say that? That is a bit weird for a coach to say. John Keim said they likely would have traded him for a 4th rounder, but the premise is that you might as well get what you can because there is no intention to bring him back. Back again a lot of that has to do with money and his injury. And yes I definitely think he aggravated the coaches at times.

The coaches never said that. For what its worth the beat writers never insinuated that is how the coaches felt (except for maybe Chris Russell who is more prone to give hot takes on social media than any of the other beat reporters). What the beat writers did say was that the team didn't plan on resigning Chase Young this offseason regardless of what happened with Montez Sweat. The fans kind of intrepreted that as teh coaches wanted him off the team. I think the reality is Young aggravated the coaches some because of his free lancing and him skipping OTA's and not always taking to coaching, but just as big of a factor was his injury history. With those two things in mind, they didn't want to heavily invest in him. But, if he was available for a reasonable price, say 4 years 56 million, I do think that would change the equation, not just with the fans, but with the organization. Now I think this is all highly unlikely, but I just thought it was an interesting hypothetical.

In the total hypothetical realm, assuming the market for Chase Young is not there due to the injury and he could be signed here for say 4 years 60 million dollars this offseason, would you guys do it?

Leno is not a free agent. It is true they could cut him and only have 4.5 million deadcap vs. having him on the roster as a 15.75 million cap hit next year, but he is not a free agent. The nice thing about having the ability to move on front a contract is you don't have to make a decision before the draft. For example, if we draft a RT in the draft, we just keep Leno for another season and start the rookie at RT. By contrast if we get a big time LT in the draft we could move on from Leno. Leno has subtle value. Yeah he is an average starter, but he never gets hurt and is more steady-eddy than some of other O-Lineman. His compensation is honestly in the range of what he should get. 70.4 PFF grade this year, 71.6 last year, never misses a game. I think people want to move on from him because he is older, but he is an asset not a liability for the team.

The sense I got was they knew they were not going to bring Chase Young back. The main reason I don't think they had any plans to bring Young back is money. I think Young's agent had given some signs he wants a big deal. Lets say a big deal is 4 years 94 million. I think given Young's injury history and given his fractured history with the coaching staff (skipping OTAs in 2021 and 2023, ignoring the coaching staff with his free lancing (in fairness to him he wasn't the only D-Lineman that freelanced), I don't think they were willing to give him top tier money. Sure if he would sign for say 4 years 60 million I think they would have brought him back, but they knew getting a pay day (his first non-rookie contract was important) and he wasn't going to give the team a discount and given his injury history and history of free lancing a bit, they just were not willing to pay free agent market value for him. And given that we have some much free agency money available, I think they realized they were likely going to have some signings that cancelled out losing him, so it was simply about getting what you can. For San Fran the pick up makes sense because they gave up a compensatory 3rd rounder and unlike the Commanders, they won't have much money to spend in free agency this offseason, so they likely will get a compensatory pick for him, possibly a third rounder, which is what they gave up for him.

1. If the Bears had given up their second for Chase Young, I think we would not have traded Sweat unless a different team like Atlanta offered a second. Basically if they had managed to get a second for Young, I don't think they trade Sweat for less than a third because they value him and would have like to bring him back. That said, I don't buy that the Bears ever considered trading their second for Chase seriously. 2. I think they traded Sweat because the Bears offer was a good offer. I think they had a good idea they would trade Young even if only for a fourth rounder. 3. If Young traded happened first, I think they still trade Sweat for a Chicago's second because they know that will likely be a top 40 pick and that is considered a good haul for Sweat.

Interesting that he thinks or thought RB were overvalued in free agency. I wonder if he still believes that because there has been some market correction over the past 5 years where more and more NFL front offices have come to the conclusion which has lead to the stagnating RB market value, where its basically stayed the same over the last 6 or 7 whereas the other positions have all gone up. Part of the problem with running back is that the physical skill set is more common than other positions. There are a lot more 5'10 guys with speed and balance in the world than 6'5 guys who ran 4.6's and are nimble. Bill Parcells had a planet theory based on how rare certain physical skill sets were. But I think there is a feel that if you had to play the 125th best RB in the league, you would only lose so much value compared to the best RB in the league. You may lose .75 wins above replacement going from 1 to 125 because the 125th RB will still be serviceable. By contrast if you went from the best OT to the 125 offensive tackle, you are going for a guy who may give one pressure every two games to a guy who is probably giving up 12 or 13 pressures a game and that difference may be 1.5wins above replacement (twice the difference of RB). So since the difference between a stud and a JAG (Just another guy) is much bigger at Tackle than RB you should pay more to get a stud tackle than stud RB.

Realistically to move up 8 or 9 to grab Wright from 16 was going to cost a lot more than a compensatory 3 round pick. At minimum it would have taken our 2nd round last year. Possibly some added change to that second roudner.

I think you are better off taking a Tackle in the first round and another in the third round or something like that. I don't want to get overly invested in the O-Line. Plus realistically getting Fashanu and Fuaga probably means moving up twice which would be costly. First move up from say 10 to 5 to grab Fashanu, that move alone probably costs our second round, then moving back into the middle of the first round to grab Fuaga probably costs us the Bears second rounder plus next years second rounder. We still have Leno and Wylie under contract next year. I rather do what Seattle did last year, grab one T in the first round and another in the third round. It gives you a year to groom the third rounder and find out if he is any good. I don't want to invest super heavy in the O-Line. I want a solid unit with no weaknesses and a couple above average plaeyrs. Considers that analysts say O-Line is a weak link unit. For example having 5 solid guys (like Charles Leno or Samuel Cosmi level) is better than having 1 superstar, 1 star, 1 solid guy, 1 low level starter, and 1 weak link. By contrast D-Line is a strong link unit. Where you are better off have 1 superstar, 1 slightly above average player, 1 average player, and 1 low level starter compared to 3 solid guys and 1 average guy.

Chicago has 110 million in cap space too so they are unlikely to get a comp pick. On the other hand, Chicago has the cap space to pay top dollar for Sweat and may do so to justify the draft picks they gave up in this trade. I think Sweat is in some ways a winner because he'll have the option of going to Atlanta after the season or if Chicago makes an offer to good to turn down, he can take that.

I don't think Fuaga will be there in the second round. However it is really early in the process so things could go in a lot of different directions. It is way too early but I think Fuaga may be T number 4. There is a lot of college football to be played too. A guy like Mims at Georgia is a wildcard. He has missed most of this season and he was not polished to start with, but like his former teammate Broderick Jones, has really nice physical tools to work with. Will teams go for a more NFL ready Fuaga or maybe a higher upside guy in Mims. I don't know. But its a good year to need a Tackle but there is decent top guys, but also the 3-6 guys are also intriguing so even if you don't have a top 7 or 8 pick, there will be exciting options in the first round.

In fairness to the media a lot of the efficiency stats place him like 20th out of 35 qualifying QB's or something like that. In terms of volume stats like passing yards where he is 6th (7th in passing yards per game as some teams have had byes), TD's thrown (tied for 7th with Jalen Hurts), completions--yes he is top 10. But some of that is a product of the fact that we throw the ball a lot.

Taliese Fuaga is I guy I have taken in a number of drafts using the PFF mock draft simulator this past week at 11. I have also taken Chop Robinson in a few of them. But Fuaga may be the best Tackle on the board when we are drafting because most likely a couple Tackles will be off the board by then.

I don't think Montez Sweat failed to play to his draft status. He was an end of the first round pick, 26th overall. He is a good player, not a great player, kinda of the median of what to expect around pick 26th. If you were creating an over/under for the 26th pick, you could probably use Sweat. Young definitely did not live up to the hype of being the 2nd overall pick. In fairness that is a hard standard to live up to, but he wasn't really all that close.

Erza Cleveland was traded from Minnesota to Jacksonville for a sixth round pick. Don't know if Jacksonville intends to extend him, but if not he seems like a slightly better version of Shaddiq Charles. Athletic guard, who lacks physicality. Pff has consistently graded him decent, averaging out in the high 60's (Charles has a 59 grade this season). Could be a low key signing to watch in free agency.