AZBearsFan Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 3 hours ago, WindyCity said: Yes, DT isn’t as big a need as OL and WR. It isn’t as big a need to you. Those last 2 words are important. We literally didn’t have a 3T, the supposed most important position in the Flus defense, on the roster. I know you don’t give a **** about the defense right now, but despite your wishes, Poles doesn’t have the luxury to just ignore the defense all together until the offense has been addressed to your satisfaction. I agree that developing Fields is Poles’ most important job, wholeheartedly, but it’s not his only job. He needs to build a team that can win too. In his mind maybe shorter term that means fielding a competent defense while his 2nd year QB enters his first offseason as the unquestioned starter so that that same young QB doesn’t have to bear the full weight of being the reason the team wins or loses (i.e. giving him a reasonable expectation to meet). 3 hours ago, WindyCity said: My biggest issue is with the twitter narrative that has been spun about Poles that he isn’t going to use free agency and that is the best way to build a team. “Building the right way”. He literally tried to sign a guy to big money in the first 6 minutes of free agency, in the first year of a “rebuild”. It doesn’t get more aggressive wave 1 than that. He never at any point said he wasn’t going to use free agency, and it’s not a Twitter narrative. He’s literally doing what he said he was going to do at his intro press conference. Be selective with his FA targets. Identify aggressive players who fit what they’re looking for schematically. Build primarily through the draft. You just don’t like how he’s going about doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Picking one specific high tier guy he’s expecting to be a centerpiece player on the defense and being aggressive to get him is literally the definition of being selective in FA. The other part of that, the draft, hasn’t happened yet. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAF-N72EX Posted April 5, 2022 Author Share Posted April 5, 2022 1 hour ago, AZBearsFan said: I know you don’t give a **** about the defense right now, but despite your wishes, Poles doesn’t have the luxury to just ignore the defense all together until the offense has been addressed to your satisfaction. Did you give every other GM the same pass too? 1 hour ago, AZBearsFan said: I agree that developing Fields is Poles’ most important job, wholeheartedly, but it’s not his only job. He needs to build a team that can win too. That's every GM's job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 8 hours ago, AZBearsFan said: He never at any point said he wasn’t going to use free agency, and it’s not a Twitter narrative. You obviously do not spend a bunch of time on Bears Twitter. They pretend the Larry O signing never happened and Poles is going to be a Ted Thompson free agency recluse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 8 hours ago, AZBearsFan said: It isn’t as big a need to you. Those last 2 words are important. Of course that is the case. Aren't we all on here just sharing our opinions? I think the approach to free agency has been flawed and you think Poles has done an exceptional job. My stance is, and will continue to be, if you are willing to drop big money on a DT, I expect you can drop more money on the OL. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigbear72 Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 37 minutes ago, WindyCity said: Of course that is the case. Aren't we all on here just sharing our opinions? I think the approach to free agency has been flawed and you think Poles has done an exceptional job. My stance is, and will continue to be, if you are willing to drop big money on a DT, I expect you can drop more money on the OL. I think this is a fair and reasonable point. I also have a differing opinion from yours but you are indeed, entitled to your opinion and I have to respect that. It's weird because both camps are so polar opposites almost to an extreme. Not unlike politics I suppose. I suspect that is just the way most people's minds work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 1 hour ago, Bigbear72 said: I think this is a fair and reasonable point. I also have a differing opinion from yours but you are indeed, entitled to your opinion and I have to respect that. It's weird because both camps are so polar opposites almost to an extreme. Not unlike politics I suppose. I suspect that is just the way most people's minds work. We will see if Poles is right in 6 months. He is choosing to not use free agency to build out the OL. He has money, Larry O showed us he is not afraid to spend, but is choosing to not spend more on offense. Maybe it will work, and I will gladly eat crow. If it doesn't... I am not saving seats on the we "should have done more on the OL" bandwagon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZBearsFan Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 13 hours ago, JAF-N72EX said: Did you give every other GM the same pass too? How exactly is saying he doesn’t have the luxury to ignore one side of the ball in favor of the other giving him a pass? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZBearsFan Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 6 hours ago, WindyCity said: Of course that is the case. Aren't we all on here just sharing our opinions? I think the approach to free agency has been flawed and you think Poles has done an exceptional job. At no point whatsoever have I ever said nor written this. I have said repeatedly that he’s doing what he told us he was going to do right or wrong. You seem to have been under the impression that he was going to do something different than what he said he would do. I’m not sure why, but that’s the lens through which you’ve chosen to look. I have also said repeatedly that it’s too soon to decide anything about his offseason approach on the whole, because it’s March (April 5th now), the draft hasn’t happened and that the roster we have now and the one we have by TC will be decidedly different. We only have part of the picture, and until we have a much bigger view of it I’m not going to stand on top of my (virtual) soap box and preach about how right or wrong he is in his approach. 6 hours ago, WindyCity said: My stance is, and will continue to be, if you are willing to drop big money on a DT, I expect you can drop more money on the OL. Why does the money part of it matter so much? Why is a 1-year $3-4M deal for a second or third tier guard a more significant or meaningful investment in the OL to you than a 2nd round pick? I would argue that it’s much less of an investment in the OL. Is there any assurance that a guy who’s been a street free agent for 6 weeks or more now is going to be notably better in 2022 than a rookie? Not really IMO, and that’s a 1-year stop gap anyway. We don’t know if there’s actually going to be a 2nd round investment on the OL yet on April 5th because the draft hasn’t happened yet but that’s the whole point I’ve been trying to make about not feeling any need to draw any conclusions now. If after draft weekend we have no more OL of consequence then I’ll be as critical as anyone about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 (edited) 15 minutes ago, AZBearsFan said: Why is a 1-year $3-4M deal for a second or third tier guard a more significant or meaningful investment in the OL to you than a 2nd round pick? We need both. You cannot hand a job to one or the other without competition. We also need depth that does not have the last name Mustipher, Simmons, or Dozier. I am not arguing one or the other, I am arguing for both. 15 minutes ago, AZBearsFan said: Why does the money part of it matter so much? It is about resource allocation. For most of the Pace era we wondered why the offense sucks, when we were spending 65% of our cap space on defense. We are still over invested in the defense. If you want the offense to be better you need to invest resources in it. If you were willing to spend big, I feel that it should have been on offense, so we can achieve some level of balance on thsi team. Edited April 5, 2022 by WindyCity 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 (edited) 17 minutes ago, AZBearsFan said: I have said repeatedly that he’s doing what he told us he was going to do right or wrong. He told us the OL wasn't good enough. In fact he publicly called them out twice. It is, I believe, the only position group that he mentioned specifically. Based on those comments I would expect more to have been done to this point. He also said they would focus on wave 2-3 of free agency and then has been knee deep in wave 1 of free agency, so to me that is a disconnect as well. So, I disagree that he is 100% sticking to what he said publicly. Edited April 5, 2022 by WindyCity Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZBearsFan Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 58 minutes ago, WindyCity said: We need both. You cannot hand a job to one or the other without competition. We also need depth that does not have the last name Mustipher, Simmons, or Dozier. I am not arguing one or the other, I am arguing for both. And I’ll tell you that plenty of “competition depth” is still out there and you’ll disagree. We’ve been here already, haven’t we? 58 minutes ago, WindyCity said: We are still over invested in the defense. If you want the offense to be better you need to invest resources in it. If you were willing to spend big, I feel that it should have been on offense, so we can achieve some level of balance on thsi team. To me evaluating investment can’t be just about the money involved. Investment is money or draft capital. Our QB, (presumed) LT, WR1, RB1 and TE1 have a combined 2022 cap hit of just $12,279,135. That’s 45% of our offensive starters on offense, because they’re all on rookie deals. Say we draft a LT we expect to start at 39 and move Jenkins to RT. We will now have our QB and both OTs under contract for 2022 with a cap hit of like $7.5M. That’s going to throw off the “where the money is spent” thing a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZBearsFan Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 1 hour ago, WindyCity said: He also said they would focus on wave 2-3 of free agency and then has been knee deep in wave 1 of free agency, so to me that is a disconnect as well. Targeting and signing one guy in wave 1 is “knee deep”? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 1 hour ago, AZBearsFan said: Targeting and signing one guy in wave 1 is “knee deep”? He also said afterward that the Larry O physical caused them to miss on other wave 1 targets. That sounds like they were right in the middle of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 1 hour ago, AZBearsFan said: And I’ll tell you that plenty of “competition depth” is still out there and you’ll disagree. We’ve been here already, haven’t we? To me evaluating investment can’t be just about the money involved. Investment is money or draft capital. Our QB, (presumed) LT, WR1, RB1 and TE1 have a combined 2022 cap hit of just $12,279,135. That’s 45% of our offensive starters on offense, because they’re all on rookie deals. Say we draft a LT we expect to start at 39 and move Jenkins to RT. We will now have our QB and both OTs under contract for 2022 with a cap hit of like $7.5M. That’s going to throw off the “where the money is spent” thing a lot. I get that. The offense is cheaper because they are younger. But I still feel 26.5 million on a DT coming off a broken foot is a lot to spend when you have some pretty glaring holes on offense. And I understand it’s importance to the defense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindyCity Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 Everything he has done makes sense with a team doing a reset this year… except Larry O. If your not going to make big moves in free agency… okay. But if you are, which he was, why not make a direct investment in Fields? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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