What do you do if you're the Chicago Bears?

[Slappy Mc]

19 hours ago, adamq said:

If anyone actually wanted Fields that badly, why wouldn't they have already made the trade?

Not even two years ago, the Ravens told Lamar Jackson that he could negotiate with any team and he didn't have suitors. Beyond that, teams flat out said no publicly. 

Fields isn't even a poor man's Lamar Jackson. It's entirely possible he stays on roster until the trade deadline. 

[Duluther]

7 minutes ago, Slappy Mc said:

Not even two years ago, the Ravens told Lamar Jackson that he could negotiate with any team and he didn't have suitors. Beyond that, teams flat out said no publicly. 

Fields isn't even a poor man's Lamar Jackson. It's entirely possible he stays on roster until the trade deadline. 

I mean, the lack of interest in Lamar was obviously collusion in response to the Watson would-be-precedent. Can't really use that one to guage this one (Fields).

[NYRaider]

37 minutes ago, Duluther said:

I mean, the lack of interest in Lamar was obviously collusion in response to the Watson would-be-precedent. Can't really use that one to guage this one (Fields).

46 minutes ago, Slappy Mc said:

Not even two years ago, the Ravens told Lamar Jackson that he could negotiate with any team and he didn't have suitors. Beyond that, teams flat out said no publicly. 

Fields isn't even a poor man's Lamar Jackson. It's entirely possible he stays on roster until the trade deadline. 

Other teams weren't going to do the Ravens work for them, they could've matched any contract that he signed. So it was going to take a deal that was just so extreme that you forced them to just move on while also having to give them 2 FRPs.

 

[lavar703]

Trust me, I would kill for Jayden Daniels to be the top QB by draft day. It would be a literal gift from the football gods to have Chicago be dumb enough to take a sub 200lb QB who refuses to slide or throw in the middle of the field. Adam Peters would turn the card in for Caleb Williams so fast that Roger Goodells hair would catch on fire. 

[Duluther]

56 minutes ago, NYRaider said:

Other teams weren't going to do the Ravens work for them, they could've matched any contract that he signed. So it was going to take a deal that was just so extreme that you forced them to just move on while also having to give them 2 FRPs.

 

Shucks. Guess every team decided it wasn't even worth their time to submit any offer at all, then (for a MVP QB). Also, if teams were certain the Ravens would match any near-absurd amount, they could have poison-pilled the Ravens into taking on a massive contract... but they didn't even do that. 

[NYRaider]

4 minutes ago, Duluther said:

Shucks. Guess every team decided it wasn't even worth their time to submit any offer at all, then (for a MVP QB). Also, if teams were certain the Ravens would match any near-absurd amount, they could have poison-pilled the Ravens into taking on a massive contract... but they didn't even do that. 

But poison pills aren't allowed in the NFL.

Quote

The 2011 CBA limited creativity with offer sheets by expressly prohibiting poison pills. Poison pills were outlawed because of the Steve Hutchinson and Nate Burleson ordeal in 2006. 

The Ravens and Lamar couldn't come to an agreement after months of negotiating. But another team was supposed to negotiate a deal in a couple of weeks that made sense financially but was also too high for the Ravens to match while also trading away 2 FRPs?

Context is also important as Lamar was coming off of two down, injury plagued seasons going into last offseason.

[Soko]

2 hours ago, Slappy Mc said:

Not even two years ago, the Ravens told Lamar Jackson that he could negotiate with any team and he didn't have suitors. Beyond that, teams flat out said no publicly. 

Fields isn't even a poor man's Lamar Jackson. It's entirely possible he stays on roster until the trade deadline. 

Kind of different, just because you’d immediately be paying Lamar elite QB money and give up two FRPs. Or, the Ravens could just come in and take your deal after all that negotiating. It’s a really different scenario.

I think Chicago, if the market was really that dry, would either let Fields go or trade him for peanuts before keeping him up to the deadline, tbh. Don’t have anything concrete to base that on, but just seems to me that they’d “do right” by Fields by doing that, and also avoid the distraction in the locker room for Caleb.

[sparky151]

On 3/7/2024 at 3:58 PM, NYRaider said:

So the Bears should pass on a potentially elite QB to build around a QB that literally no other team in the league prioritizes as a potential starter?

"potentially elite" is a lot more common than actual elite.

My view is the Bears should weigh their options rather than fall for typical draft hype. If the choice is Fields (or a free agent QB) plus a haul for the top pick vs a rookie QB of their choice plus whatever they can get in trade for Fields, the best option is probably to minimize the risk. The least risky course is likely to simply build around Fields and get more production from him. Next least risky is to bring in a veteran QB. Riskiest is to use the top pick on one of the draft prospects.

On 3/7/2024 at 3:44 PM, Soko said:

Probably talking about this past year, not 2022.

And being a generational prospect is more of a descriptive label than it is a literal one. It’s something people say to describe how great a blue chip prospect is, not to literally say that we haven’t seen a prospect this good in a decade. Some are calling Bowers generational even though Pitts had the same label. It’s not literal.

 

It's just hype. Every year we get told how great the draft class is. This year's QB class is considered better than last years and certainly better than 2022. I hope nobody here thinks this class will exceed the class of 2020. Let's hope it outperforms 2021. But if you consider Williams the top QB prospect in this class, where do you think he compares to Burrow or Lawrence as a prospect? Or even Tua or Herbert? Do you predict he'll outperform what Stroud did as a rookie?

 

On 3/7/2024 at 4:01 PM, Sugashane said:

So a guy that has been under constant scrutiny since high school has an easier road than a guy that got to develop and grow with far less pressure, and you think that enhanced that latter's mental toughness? Totally disagree. 

If you're going to state that then you obviously would say Fields has been an abject failure. He has led his team to a 10-28 record. So you've ruined any argument for being pro Fields if you want to stick with that argument. He put up 45, threw for 462 yards, 5 TDs, and Tulane allowed over 300 yards rushing. Clearly Williams should have done more... 

So how much of a failure is Fields for the defense giving up 27ppg in 2022? Clearly he didn't ins[ire them to play well, so he caused them to have the worst scoring defense in the league, at least by your own logic. 

Why didn't Daniels inspire his defense to play better then? lol 

Also I'd have a hard time saying a defense giving up only 22 ppg would be "terrible" 

I 100% am. Fields has not been able to play consistently, nor has he been able to stay healthy. Call me crazy but I don't believe Poles wants to bank on an injury prone QB who is only incrementally improving year by year that he didn't even draft as his savior. If he only had the pick at 9, the chance of moving up would be 100% on the table, but likely they take who falls to them. 

He also is the head of the team that has spent less than any team in the league over the last 3 years, and you think he is going to run out to go after Mayfield? No way. 

Its cool how you gloss over how he had his first season at 17 TDs and 2 picks, then regressed. Then he had an amazing year. So basically he was mediocre for all but 2 years out of his 5. Are you thinking Fields somehow makes a similar jump? lol 

Exactly, Rattler beat out a Heisman hopeful, then followed a coach he trusted. Daniels ran away from one school because he couldn't perform without an absolutely stacked WR corps. You know who DID perform without an all NCAA offensive cast? Williams. 

Daniels reached the same heights as Williams vs better competition in the SEC than Williams faced in the Pac-12. Williams isn't to blame for Alex Grinch being bad at his job but USC mailed it in for the Cotton Bowl. If they had played to their average level, they would have beat Tulane. As a team captain, it reflects poorly on Williams that he couldn't get his defensive teammates to play to average. Sure, it's worse for the defensive captains but they aren't being considered for the top pick. 

College (and high school) football is more emotional than pro. The latter is more about matchups. I'm not arguing that Fields is an elite QB merely that most likely Williams won't be. They both have similar college resumes, with Williams winning a Heisman and Fields getting his team to the playoffs twice. But Williams is being proclaimed as a "can't miss" prospect. I'd be willing to bet he's less successful as a rookie than Stroud was this past season. And the same for Daniels, Maye, and any other QBs in this class. It's also worth remembering that the Bears missed the playoffs in 2023 because the defense couldn't hold leads late in the 4th quarter of several games.

Poles doesn't need to win the Super Bowl to keep his job, he needs to build a winning roster and avoid using the top pick on a QB who doesn't work out in Chicago. Taking a rookie QB is a gamble compared to a vet plus extra draft picks. IMO Poles took a risk in keeping Eberflus around, let's see how it turns out.

The comparison was Williams vs Daniels. The latter also played well at LSU in 2022. He had 17 TDs and 3 picks that year plus almost 900 rushing yards and 11 TDs. Also his passing efficiency numbers at LSU exceed Williams USC or career numbers or any of Williams single seasons including his Heisman year. Daniels played with a better supporting cast but also vs much better competition. He beat Alabama while Williams lost to Utah (3 times), Tulane, and UCLA in addition to losses to better teams in Oregon and Washington. And I guess you give Williams a mulligan for his nightmare in South Bend?

On 3/7/2024 at 4:14 PM, Duluther said:

I mean, the lack of interest in Lamar was obviously collusion in response to the Watson would-be-precedent. Can't really use that one to guage this one (Fields).

But Lamar didn't hold out for a fully guaranteed deal, he took a standard structure.

On 3/7/2024 at 4:53 PM, NYRaider said:

Other teams weren't going to do the Ravens work for them, they could've matched any contract that he signed. So it was going to take a deal that was just so extreme that you forced them to just move on while also having to give them 2 FRPs.

 

Sure it would require giving up 2 firsts for Jackson. Maybe nobody was willing to do that but if a team was, they could easily structure it to cause more problems for the Ravens than them. Ravens would have a week to match but a team with more cap space could have given the Ravens the option of either not matching or having to restructure their higher priced players to clear cap space and give up their roster flexibility. Baltimore may well have decided to take the 2 FRPs and keep the rest of their roster intact. They could roll with pro-bowl QB Huntley 😄

On 3/7/2024 at 6:03 PM, NYRaider said:

But poison pills aren't allowed in the NFL.

The Ravens and Lamar couldn't come to an agreement after months of negotiating. But another team was supposed to negotiate a deal in a couple of weeks that made sense financially but was also too high for the Ravens to match while also trading away 2 FRPs?

Context is also important as Lamar was coming off of two down, injury plagued seasons going into last offseason.

I think your last sentence is the key. It's not that hard to strike a deal if both parties want to get it done. Doesn't take weeks or poison pills. 

[sparky151]

On 3/7/2024 at 6:13 PM, Soko said:

Kind of different, just because you’d immediately be paying Lamar elite QB money and give up two FRPs. Or, the Ravens could just come in and take your deal after all that negotiating. It’s a really different scenario.

I think Chicago, if the market was really that dry, would either let Fields go or trade him for peanuts before keeping him up to the deadline, tbh. Don’t have anything concrete to base that on, but just seems to me that they’d “do right” by Fields by doing that, and also avoid the distraction in the locker room for Caleb.

Fields is a "team first" guy so if they don't get a good trade offer the Bears don't need to cut him. They obviously wont' exercise the 5th year option in that scenario but can afford to pay their backup QB less than 3 mil for 2024.

[NYRaider]

6 minutes ago, sparky151 said:

"potentially elite" is a lot more common than actual elite.

My view is the Bears should weigh their options rather than fall for typical draft hype. If the choice is Fields (or a free agent QB) plus a haul for the top pick vs a rookie QB of their choice plus whatever they can get in trade for Fields, the best option is probably to minimize the risk. The least risky course is likely to simply build around Fields and get more production from him. Next least risky is to bring in a veteran QB. Riskiest is to use the top pick on one of the draft prospects.

Obviously there are only a few elite QB's in the entire league so obtaining one is difficult. 

Fall for the typical draft hype? As we saw last year the price of acquiring the #1 pick is extremely steep and you typically have to leverage years of draft capital. They're in position to land a potential franchise QB without having to give up any additional resources with 3 top end prospects to choose from. 

What free agent QB are they going to sign? I think gambling on Fields who was bad last season or a free agent like Russell Wilson who was also bad last season is more risky than bringing in a rookie on a cost controlled contract. 

14 minutes ago, sparky151 said:

Sure it would require giving up 2 firsts for Jackson. Maybe nobody was willing to do that but if a team was, they could easily structure it to cause more problems for the Ravens than them. Ravens would have a week to match but a team with more cap space could have given the Ravens the option of either not matching or having to restructure their higher priced players to clear cap space and give up their roster flexibility. Baltimore may well have decided to take the 2 FRPs and keep the rest of their roster intact. They could roll with pro-bowl QB Huntley 😄

I think your last sentence is the key. It's not that hard to strike a deal if both parties want to get it done. Doesn't take weeks or poison pills. 

The only 4 teams that were able to structure the deal like that were the Raiders, Falcons, Texans, and Colts. 

Did you forget that Lamar doesn't have an agent and that's why negotiations between him and the Ravens took forever. 

[NYRaider]

43 minutes ago, sparky151 said:

Fields is a "team first" guy so if they don't get a good trade offer the Bears don't need to cut him. They obviously wont' exercise the 5th year option in that scenario but can afford to pay their backup QB less than 3 mil for 2024.

Didn't Poles say he wanted to do right by Fields though? How is keeping him as their backup and declining his 5th year option doing right by him?

[Soko]

43 minutes ago, sparky151 said:

 

It's just hype. Every year we get told how great the draft class is. This year's QB class is considered better than last years and certainly better than 2022. I hope nobody here thinks this class will exceed the class of 2020. Let's hope it outperforms 2021. But if you consider Williams the top QB prospect in this class, where do you think he compares to Burrow or Lawrence as a prospect? Or even Tua or Herbert? Do you predict he'll outperform what Stroud did as a rookie?

Blindly calling it “just hype” is just the opposite end of the stupid spectrum of calling Caleb Williams the next Mahomes. Yeah, there are highly touted prospects every few years, some often labeled as “generational”, but that doesn’t mean it’s just hype. Like, just wiping out all context and nuance to the draft or scouting on the basis of “there’s hype every year”, you’re gonna miss on a ton of players. It’s a dumb stance.

I don’t know how good Caleb will definitively be. Nobody knows with certainty. Whether he measures up to Burrow or Stroud or Mahomes is irrelevant, because everyone in the league has seen Fields not come remotely close to that level, ever. Not even in the same universe. The bar is, like, the 25th best QB, not 5th. 
 

41 minutes ago, sparky151 said:

Fields is a "team first" guy so if they don't get a good trade offer the Bears don't need to cut him. They obviously wont' exercise the 5th year option in that scenario but can afford to pay their backup QB less than 3 mil for 2024.

The distraction isn’t going to come from Fields himself. It’s from the team, the media, and the fans. You gain nothing from keeping Fields in 2024 as a backup with Caleb on the roster. 

I’m not going to sit here and crystal ball what Fields or the Bears would/wouldn’t do, like you’ve pretended to do. Like, I have no idea if Fields would take a one year deal or not (I doubt it, but I don’t pretend to know). I’m going off of Poles’ words on figuring things out for Justin’s sake, I’m going off of things I’ve seen other teams do (like SF letting Lance find a trade option), and I’m going off of the cost-benefit analysis of keeping Fields as a backup vs letting him go for peanuts.

[Sugashane]

2 hours ago, sparky151 said:

Daniels reached the same heights as Williams vs better competition in the SEC than Williams faced in the Pac-12. Williams isn't to blame for Alex Grinch being bad at his job but USC mailed it in for the Cotton Bowl. If they had played to their average level, they would have beat Tulane. As a team captain, it reflects poorly on Williams that he couldn't get his defensive teammates to play to average. Sure, it's worse for the defensive captains but they aren't being considered for the top pick.

College (and high school) football is more emotional than pro. The latter is more about matchups. I'm not arguing that Fields is an elite QB merely that most likely Williams won't be. They both have similar college resumes, with Williams winning a Heisman and Fields getting his team to the playoffs twice. But Williams is being proclaimed as a "can't miss" prospect. I'd be willing to bet he's less successful as a rookie than Stroud was this past season. And the same for Daniels, Maye, and any other QBs in this class. It's also worth remembering that the Bears missed the playoffs in 2023 because the defense couldn't hold leads late in the 4th quarter of several games.

Poles doesn't need to win the Super Bowl to keep his job, he needs to build a winning roster and avoid using the top pick on a QB who doesn't work out in Chicago. Taking a rookie QB is a gamble compared to a vet plus extra draft picks. IMO Poles took a risk in keeping Eberflus around, let's see how it turns out.

The comparison was Williams vs Daniels. The latter also played well at LSU in 2022. He had 17 TDs and 3 picks that year plus almost 900 rushing yards and 11 TDs. Also his passing efficiency numbers at LSU exceed Williams USC or career numbers or any of Williams single seasons including his Heisman year. Daniels played with a better supporting cast but also vs much better competition. He beat Alabama while Williams lost to Utah (3 times), Tulane, and UCLA in addition to losses to better teams in Oregon and Washington. And I guess you give Williams a mulligan for his nightmare in South Bend?

 

He had significantly more help than Williams did, as I noted already. And if USC mailed it in while putting up 45 points then sign me up. I guess that means you're saying Daniels mailed it in for the Las Vegas Bowl too? I mean they put up 13 points, so less than a third of the results of Williams' effort.

The only thing "more emotional" in any of this is your arguments, because they aren't based on any sort of logic. In college it is more about match ups because you have 50 guys on the team that will be working at high schools and offices in the next 2-3 years, then you have freak athletes destined to go to the NFL on the other end of the spectrum. There is a greater physical disparity in college than in the pros and it isn't even close. Almost no one but the clickbait loving media is claiming he is a can't miss prospect, that's an emotional over-generalization. He 100% could bust, as any draft pick can. MHJ is the only one I see as actually being in the conversation of being a generational talent, and even he can flop. You're also not making that bold of a statement in regards to Stroud, the guy literally put up a top 10 rookie season by any QB in history. I mean that's about as safe a bet as you can make, bettering Stroud's production as a rookie is going to be a ridiculous aberration. But you don't draft a guy in the first to be concerned just about his rookie year, you're hoping he can be the face of the franchise for the next 15 years.

And you don't get to blame the defense for Fields, you already made the argument that the QB needs to "lead his team" so the failing of Fields. You're saying Williams and USC mailed it in for the Cotton Bowl but Williams put up 46 and *shockingly* the defense blew a 15 point lead in the last 5 minutes. So if that's on the QB Fields is trash and McCarthy is the guy that should be taken 1st overall by CHI. You're point was simply a bad one.

If he can't find a QB to consistently perform at a high level then he isn't going to consistently win. Anyone who has watched the Bears for the last 50 years as seen that the only time they were able to win consistently was when they had an all-decade team to bail out the mediocre QB (McMahon). Bears have had some excellent defenses and players on offense but what has the constant Achilles heel been? QB. Fields has just been another addition to that history. If he sits on his hands and passes over the QB and 1-2 of them ball out then Kevin Warren likely boots Poles to find someone who can find talent at QB. Wilson was a "safe" move for DEN just as Carr was for NO, glad they didn't make a gamble and played it safe... Also if you want to build a roster, having a QB on a rookie deal makes it much easier than shelling out $40+ mil to one guy who can get hurt, under-perform, or not fit the system as well as you hoped. If the GM lacks the pair needed to snag the guy he believes is a franchise QB, then he shouldn't be involved in any competition. You can't cower away from a major decision, otherwise you're admitting you're not confident or talented enough to scout for talent to begin with.

Players have bad games. You never saw Mahomes have a bad game in college or in the pros? Brady has had bad games. Peyton had them. If you really want to though, look at what Williams did though, he still put up 20 points in that nightmare game, while Daniels coasted on his defense to win game while putting up 13 vs Arkansas. Was it Daniels' "emotion" that got LSU bent over by GA by 20? What about his garbage performance vs Texas A&M and Daniels' 0 TDs? You have an "excuse" for that? It was clear the defense overwhelmed USC's offensive line, but did LSU get overwhelmed by the dominant TAM and TEN? By your logic that's on Daniels. As is Daniels getting absolutely outplayed by Travis in the season opener and the almighty Hooker the year prior? Or what other mental gymnastics need to be done to justify standards for Williams that don't count against Daniels?

[CWood21]

On 3/7/2024 at 4:53 PM, Duluther said:

Shucks. Guess every team decided it wasn't even worth their time to submit any offer at all, then (for a MVP QB). Also, if teams were certain the Ravens would match any near-absurd amount, they could have poison-pilled the Ravens into taking on a massive contract... but they didn't even do that. 

As @NYRaider mentioned, poison pills were eliminated in a previous CBA after the Hutchinson/Burleson incidents.  And it's not that teams didn't want to sign Lamar Jackson, it's that they knew there was zero chance that the Ravens didn't match any and all offer sheets on him.  They could tie up their cap space (I believe it's 48 hours, but I could very well be wrong) only to see Baltimore match.  There was no reason for any team to negotiate on behalf of the Ravens.

[NYRaider]

7 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

As @NYRaider mentioned, poison pills were eliminated in a previous CBA after the Hutchinson/Burleson incidents.  And it's not that teams didn't want to sign Lamar Jackson, it's that they knew there was zero chance that the Ravens didn't match any and all offer sheets on him.  They could tie up their cap space (I believe it's 48 hours, but I could very well be wrong) only to see Baltimore match.  There was no reason for any team to negotiate on behalf of the Ravens.

It took the Ravens until May to get a deal done with Lamar. But another team was supposed to get it done within a couple of days to start free agency so that they'd still be able to target guys if the Ravens matched? It's like come on.