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Ryan Pace Has Gone All-In on the 2020 Season

https://dabearsblog.com/2020/enjoy-2020-because-ryan-pace-is-all-in

5fb7dabcc9ddb6eb415d87bdfbe6736d?s=16&d= Johnathan Wood | June 24th, 2020

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After a disappointing 8-8 season, Ryan Pace moved aggressively this off-season to revamp the Bears for 2020.

On defense, he re-signed Danny Trevathan, upgraded Leonard Floyd with Robert Quinn, signed Tashaun Gipson as a cheap replacement for HaHa Clinton-Dix, and drafted Jaylon Johnson to replace the aging Prince Amukamara.

On offense, he traded for Nick Foles to compete with upgrade Mitchell Trubisky, replaced oft-injured veterans Taylor Gabriel, Kyle Long, and Trey Burton with Ted Ginn, Germain Ifedi, and Jimmy Graham, and drafted Cole Kmet to hopefully give Chicago their first long-term solution at tight end since Greg Olsen was shipped out of town a decade ago.

That’s an impressively long list of moves for a team that entered the off-season with surprisingly low amounts of cap space and draft capital. And it has left the Bears with what appears to be a pretty solid roster, at least on paper, though it’s fair to say that questions at quarterback certainly limit the optimism.

But things start to look much more questionable when you gaze beyond 2020. You see, the only way Pace could spend money this off-season was by borrowing from the future salary cap, and he did that quite heavily. Several players have had their contracts restructured within the last year+ to clear up immediate cap space by moving money to 2021 and beyond. This totaled around $20M from a combination of Khalil Mack ($7.8M), Kyle Fuller ($4.5M), Charles Leno ($4.2M), and Cody Whitehair ($3.2M).

On top of that, most contracts Pace handed out this off-season were absurdly back loaded.

  • Robert Quinn has a $6M 2020 cap hit on what is essentially a 3 year, $43M deal (a 2020 savings of over $8M from the average cap hit for the deal). The downside is he will still have total cap charges of $37M remaining in 2021 and beyond, and will likely only play in Chicago for 2021-2022. To make matters worse, those will be his age 31 and 32 seasons, when his play will likely start to slip. He’s a speed rusher that relies heavily on that one skill, so it’s possible that decline will be very pronounced.
  • Danny Trevathan has a $4.2M 2020 cap hit on what is essentially a three-year, $21.7M deal. That saves about $3M in 2020 cap, but means the Bears will still have $17.5M on cap charges for his remaining 2 seasons, in which he will be 31 and 32 and likely start to see his play decline.
  • Jimmy Graham has a $6M 2020 cap hit on what is essentially a one-year, $9M deal. That saves $3M in 2020, but means the Bears will have that cap hit in 2021 when he is likely not on the team (if he is on the team, he’ll have a $10M cap hit, which is not ideal for a player who will turn 35 during that season and has already started showing signs of decline).

 

Add it all up, and these three contracts saved the Bears roughly $14M in cap space, which they’ll pay for in upcoming years. Between these back loaded deals and the restructures, plus the June 1 cut of Trey Burton that moved some of his dead money to 2021, the Bears have pushed over $35M of 2020 cap space to 2021 and beyond. That’s roughly 17% of this years’ $198.2M cap.

Because of these moves, the Bears already have $183M in cap charges for 2021, with roughly $30M in projected cap space. A few caveats to that:

  • There has been ample rumor and speculation about the 2021 salary cap being lower than expected due to the financial impact of Covid-19, and this $30M number doesn’t account for that possibility.
  • The Bears also have a slew of 2020 contributors who are currently free agents in 2021 and thus don’t count in that $183M number, including Allen Robinson, Cordarrelle Patterson, Roy Robertson-Harris, Tarik Cohen, Ted Ginn Jr., Germain Ifedi, and Tashaun Gipson.
  • They currently only have $6.6M in cap charges for QBs in 2021, but that will undoubtedly go up. Assuming Nick Foles wins the starting job as expected, his cap hit for 2021 will increase by up to $6M depending on how he performs, and how well the Bears do. If he plays well enough, he can opt out of his deal, forcing the Bears to re-sign him for even more money or find another (presumably more expensive) option in free agency. If Mitchell Trubisky wins the starting job and plays well enough for the Bears to want to keep him around, the QB tag is expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $25M.
  • There are players they can cut to help clear cap space (most notably Bobby Massie, Jimmy Graham, Buster Skrine, and Akiem Hicks), but each of them creates yet another hole that must be filled.

The Bears won’t have enough money to go around next year, and their options to create more room are limited by how much money they’ve already moved to the future. And as I touched on with Graham, Trevathan, and Quinn above, they also have a growing number of key players who are 30 or older, and thus will start to see their performance diminish. Chicago’s roster is also pretty light on young talent thanks to several straight years of not having a full slate of draft picks at their disposal. You can see in the table below the discrepancy between players 30+ and those who are 25 or younger at the start of the 2020 season.


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Look at that list of players who are 25 or younger: how many of them are proven, quality starters in the NFL?

You could argue Roquan Smith, though he’s been inconsistent. Anthony Miller has shown flashes, but again has not proven it consistently. James Daniels looked pretty decent as a rookie but took a sizable step back in 2019. Tarik Cohen is the only one who has made a Pro Bowl, but that was for special teams, and he’s a free agent after this year. The Bears desperately need pretty much all of them to take a big step forward this year to solidify their roster and help replace some of the talent that will age out in the next few years.

Now look at the list of guys who are 30 or older. Not all of them are stars on the Bears, but that includes a sizable portion of their front 7 on defense (Trvathan, Hicks, Quinn), which is the clear strength of the team. This is where I mention that Khalil Mack is 29 and will be joining the 30+ list very soon as well, and the Bears are likely losing Roy Robertson-Harris in free agency next year. Two starters in the secondary are also on that list and likely gone after 2020.

And the years of light drafting means there aren’t many highly regarded options to replace them. The players listed in the 25 or younger table above include every single day 1 or 2 draft pick currently on a rookie deal. The only other young players on the roster were day three picks or undrafted free agents, who typically have only a small chance of becoming a starter in the NFL.

You could always look to the draft to get more young talent, and indeed the Bears will finally have an almost full slate of picks in 2021 (they traded a 2021 4th for 2020 5th round pick Darnell Mooney) for the first time in ages. But they will likely need to draft a quarterback, which probably means trading up. The most notable recent trade-ups for a team drafting in the 20s (where I think the Bears are likely to be following a solid 2020 season) were the Chiefs and Texans in 2017 to draft Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson at 10th and 12th, respectively. Both cost 2 1st round picks, and the Chiefs also gave up a 3rd rounder. If the Bears trade up for a QB in 2021, they will have a depleted draft to fill other holes for the 5th year in a row (and likely 6th in 2022 as part of that trade). If they don’t trade up for a QB in 2021, they will have Nick Foles and no QB of the future on the roster.

I wrote following the 2018 season that the Bears’ window for a Super Bowl was wide open. They had built a quality roster around a young quarterback who was now entering his 3rd year as a starter, and they had a two year window in 2019-20 to capitalize on that before he got expensive. Unfortunately, Mitchell Trubisky went bust, and with it the Bears’ window was shot.

The Bears’ flexibility this off-season was limited because they had no money or draft picks and most of their contracts didn’t make sense to get out of through at least 2020 (Ryan Pace absolutely constructed this roster with that 2019-20 window in mind). The situation called for a roster re-set that would give them maximal flexibility to rebuild around a different young QB starting in 2021, but instead Pace doubled down on chasing a ring and mortgaged Chicago’s future in the process. That’s a really foolish bold strategy when you don’t have a top 20 quarterback on the roster.

The 2020 Bears have an aging and expensive roster that they are only able to afford by borrowing heavily against the future. They are lacking in young talent due to years of not having enough draft picks, a problem that is likely going to continue in 2021 when they will need to trade up to try again at quarterback.

The 2020 Bears should be a pretty good team. Fans would be wise to enjoy that, because 2021 and beyond don’t look as though they’ll be quite as much fun.

 

 

 

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Yeah it is getting to be do or die for Pace.   I don't think it is for cap reasons like stated though.  He missed on the QB or looks to have and has no clear plan or path in place to start over.     

I am getting on the cap is a near myth bandwagon.   Seems to always be a way to find cap money to sign your own guys if you want them back.

Most guys who get let go teams don't really want or simply want to replace with younger talent sooner rather than later.

It seems most roster holes can be filled in with 1 year vet minimums like Ifedi and HHCD and Gibson and Ginn and what not when you need to.

And we are out of Mack draft hole and have high round picks again.  

Real trick and problem will be deciding what to do at QB after this season.  They didn't pick up MTs option so they have to tag him or resign him if they want him.   So if MT plays really good he is more expensive either way.   

If Foles plays really good his contract gets voided and he is FA.  So if you want him back in that instance he will be real expensive.  If he played bad why would you want him back?  

Winning big would be better if it was MT because it is more palatable to sign a young player to a big deal than an old one.   But MT would carry thought that it would be first year he played well and can he continue?   

If they both play bad then you have to go with best rookie available in 2021 or try to find an affordable veteran QB with good players at other positions.  But who would be available?   Newton after sitting for a year maybe?  

You could tank in 2021 and go for top pick 2022.  But Pace wouldn't be here for that so why would he tank?  

So to sum:  

1) Foles or MT play so well that whichever gets resigned.  

2) If back up also plays well for a short time or never plays but looks good in practice Foles will play on existing deal.  If it is MT he can sign for peanuts.  

3) They both play bad and Bears draft a QB in first next year.

4) They both play bad and Beas sign another veteran QB next year.

I think if it is 3 or 4 2021 will be Pace/Nagy last year in Chicago.  Which will suck if they draft a rookie because it means we are developing a rookie with a new coach again after his rookie season has already been spent with someone else.

I would prefer if Bears are going to draft a new QB they just clean the slate and start fresh 2021.  

They probably won't jettison Nagy and Pace that quickly though.

 

 

 

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The real problem remains the offense, you have no long term QB and no strong offense to put an average QB in. Meanwhile you're stuck paying a lot of money for defensive talent on a D who are amazing but can't win every game on their own. 

The Bears are going nowhere until they hit on a young QB who can play early after being draftied and lifts the team. 

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The list of 30 and older don't bother me since Gipson, Ginn, Graham and Foles are all just stop gaps and Pace has already (hopefully) potentially found Skrine's replacement in Vildor. 

ILB, pass rusher, and DL are a concern though moving forward. But that may be a couple years away too and alot can happen from now until then so...

11 hours ago, soulman said:

The 2020 Bears have an aging and expensive roster that they are only able to afford by borrowing heavily against the future. They are lacking in young talent due to years of not having enough draft picks, a problem that is likely going to continue in 2021 when they will need to trade up to try again at quarterback.

 This is not true at all. Daniels, Montgomery, and Roquan are only 23. Kyle Fuller is only 28. Eddie Jackson is only 27. Khalil Mack and Trevathan just turned 29 and 30. Nichols is only 24. Whitehair is only 28. Robinson is just about to turn 28 in a couple months. Cohen is only 25. RRH and Bush are only 27. Goldman is only 26. 

And we don't know yet about the rookies we just drafted either. 

It was good read though. 

 

Edited by JustAnotherFan
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1 hour ago, RunningVaccs said:

The real problem remains the offense, you have no long term QB and no strong offense to put an average QB in. Meanwhile you're stuck paying a lot of money for defensive talent on a D who are amazing but can't win every game on their own. 

The Bears are going nowhere until they hit on a young QB who can play early after being draftied and lifts the team. 

I think the offense --minus the QB position--is stronger than what most people are giving it credit for. Not a top tier by any stretch of imagination but the potential talent is there to be a top-15ish. I'm expecting a breakout year from Miller. A good starting year for Kmet and a surprisingly good year from Mooney. Not a breakout year but a year that really gets everyone excited about him moving forward. 

All of this though is reliant on Nagy though.   

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For starters I'm not as willing to sell short on Pace and Nagy as Jonathan Woods may be.  Pace is well liked by the McCaskeys and Nagy is well liked by Pace so I won't question their job security as much as others.  This is the Bears were talking about not the NY Jets and the McCaskeys abhor too many or too rapid changes.  They're ultra conservative folks and moving on from either does two things.  1) It questions their judgement about the hire in the first place, and 2) They'd need to hire replacements which is a major process with them.  IMHO they'll have at least 2020 and 2021 to show their approach is working well enough to stay on under contract extensions.  But they will have to win consistently to do that.

The Cap:  I'm with DLL.  We always seem to find the cap room somehow although I do expect we'll lose some guys who are coming off rookie deals like we did with Kwit.

Age:  I see this as more relevant to the player and his position than age 30 being some kind of barrier after which all player begin to decline.  Players can remain far better conditioned and tuned up medically now than they could even 10-20 years ago.  Guys like Mack and Quinn may not set single season sack records but they don't have to in order to be effective.  Hicks is a man mountain who may or may not need to drop 20-25lbs as he ages. I don't think we're their yet but it's also why I believe Pace should be adding Edge Rushers and DL in every draft.

QB:  We can do quite well with these two QBs IF Mitch can ever rise to the level expected of him when he was drafted and/or Foles still has that same savvy and fortitude that made him a Super Bowl MVP.  He's not a Trent Dilfer "one shot wonder".  He's much better than that.  We just aren't gonna know what we have and what we don't have before the 2020 season passes and we should probably expect it to be an odd one due to the COVID and how teams and players have had to meet and train.  Expect the unexpected.

I'm one who believes that on paper we're far better than most of the media gives us credit for but will that translate to playing well enough to overcome a 2019 season of woeful under achieving?  I dunno yet.  What I do believe is that Nagy made some good moves with his coaching staff and again Pace handled FA and the draft pretty damn well given what he had to work with as far as picks and cap room.  What we need on offense more than anything is to see the OL an QB positions stabilized at a functional level and for some of our 2nd and 3rd year guys to breakout as starters and top shelf productive backups.  With our defense and progress throughout the season we could very easily win 10-12 games again.

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