Starting a new job this week has up-ended my initial plans to crank out the first team break down for the thread. I had hoped to get a team summary on “paper” before the lockout officially ended and any roster moves were announced, but shit happens. Still, now’s the time to at least get started. As usual this will be wordy and probably boring to just about everyone who isn’t a Bears fan, but this is what I do. Deal with it.
As has been my tradition of late, I’ll do this as a positional breakdown. I’ll highlight each positional group as they stand now, what they stand to lose in free agency, who they’ve drafted and signed as UDFAs, who they need to try and keep and who they should target on the open market. We’ll see how many signings and cuts happen between when I start typing this and when it gets posted.
NFC NORTH CHAMPION Chicago Bears
Coaching and Management
Not a lot to discuss on this front. The “brain trust” managed to luck into a division title and a conference title game last season so the heat on their seats ought to be a bit cooler than it was last off-season. Bears’ president Ted Phillips and General Manager Jerry Angelo are under contract until 2013 and they conspired to extend Lovie until 2013 as well on the heels of yet another contract year performance. Lovie might be the first coach I’ve ever seen successfully pull off the contract year phenomenon. Phillips and Angelo have both said they plan to retire when their contracts are up, and it’s unlikely that Lovie gets booted while they are still around. Odds are good that these clowns will still be at Halas Hall through the 2012 season unless the 2011 season is a complete trainwreck…which isn’t out of the question.
Still, this helter skelter off-season is going to really be a test for front offices across the league. The most agile and creative will probably have great opportunities to advance this year in the mad scramble that’s sure to take place over the next few weeks. The Bears player-personnel men have never been considered creative and I’m not sure they are agile either. It’s unclear how the new salary cap structure and contract restrictions will effect teams going forward, but the salary cap floor will probably make the Bears even more driven to retain their own players while steering away from big dollar FAs then they have been in years past. For all the Bears front office faults, they tend to be pretty savvy with money and contracts. They took advantage of the uncapped year and front loaded the Cutler and Peppers contracts and restructured a couple others to keep the 2011 cap numbers under control. They rarely let their own players hit the open market driving up costs. I suspect that this new system could favor this group, if only they had the scouting ability to match this fiscal responsibility.
The rest of the staff is star studded, former head coaches Mice Tice, Mike Martz and Rod Marinelli will all be back in their respective roles and each will be expected to make great strides in their second year. They’d better since they each are responsible for the 3 youngest and fragilest positional groups. Long story slightly less long, the Bears have stability and experience at the top and it’s time to string together a couple winning seasons as a result.
Quarterback
On the Roster: Jay Cutler, Nathan Enderle ®, Trevor Vittatoe (UDFA)
On the Bubble: Caleb Hanie (RFA)
On the Radar: Brad Smith
Under the Bus: Todd Collins
There will certainly be a lot of scrutiny on Jay Cutler at the start of this season considering the way the last one ended. He needs to grow up, and while I’m loathe to acknowledge this sort of tripe his tabloid relationship isn’t really giving me much confidence that any major changes are afoot.
The injury is a moot point as far as all right minded people should agree. I confess to being somewhat apprehensive about the lack of medical attention it apparently received, that either means it’s healed or it’s been neglected. Hopefully it’s the former. He’s been throwing a lot in workouts and there’s no talk of any ill effects.
Back to that maturity issue, I don’t care about the on the field antics and he seems to be well supported by his teammates. The tabloid stuff isn’t necessarily a big deal and he’s never been in any kind of trouble off the field, but I think I might have felt a little better about his focus if he were settling down. Where this stuff sticks in my craw is his apparent unwillingness to work in practice and accept coaching. By most accounts he does exactly what’s asked of him, no more. If he ever got a QB coach he’d listen to and fixed those sloppy mechanics he could really be something. Martz might be part of the problem there, as is Lovie’s laissez faire approach, but I had hoped that all the misery in last seasons conclusion would send him to Siberia Rocky style to prove people wrong. That doesn’t appear to be the case.
The real dynamic bit will be the chaos behind the starter. Caleb Hanie looked to be a very solid #2 when he was called into service in the NFC title game and almost led the epic comeback. Prior to that I’ve often said that he was a real underrated talent and he’s improved every step of the way when he’s gotten his admittedly limited preseason snaps. The big problem is that he’s inexplicably been out of favor with the coaching staff. Martz seems to hate him and Lovie has cooled on him significantly since he was signed out of college. He was inexcusably listed 3rd on the depth chart behind Todd Collin’s corpse last season for god’s sake. It’s unclear where Hanie will end up this season and whether he’ll even be a Bear. As an restricted free agent (RFA) the Bears have the right of first refusal on him, they can match any competing offer. It’s likely he’ll receive a few, it’s unclear if the Bears will match those offers. Since Hanie was an UDFA the Bears would be due no compensation if he was lost. Obviously I think the Bears would be foolish not to lock him up since Cutler’s shown he’s not invincible and having experience in Martz’s system is important.
Last year the Bears drafted Dan LeFevour with the intention of stashing him on their practice squad. Hanie’s injury and the ill-advised Todd Collins contract made it so they didn’t even have the option of rostering him, and naturally he was lost to the Bengals once he was released. They could be in a similar situation this year as well. If they decide to retain Hanie they’ll have to decide if they can afford to stick Enderle on the roster as the #3. Emergency QB rules have been erased in this new CBA meaning that it’s even less likely that teams will carry 3rd QBs as developmental projects. I suspect the Bears will roster Enderle no matter what happens with Hanie after losing the practice squad gamble last year. This makes the Bears signing a veteran backup off the free agent pool a near impossibility.
I included Brad Smith in this list as being on the Bears radar on the heels of numerous rumors to that extent. He’s an interesting option and he’d come at the right price. Practically he’s more of a WR than a QB but if the Bears lose Hanie and consider rostering just 2 QBs this year having Smith on the roster as a gadget player and 3rd QB would be a nice resource. I’ll save the discussion of Smith’s potential as a WR/KR for later, but I think he’s a intriguing option if the Bears decide to upend things at the QB position.
Vittatoe is a undrafted QB out of UTEP who I know next to nothing about. Odds are that he’s nothing more than a camp arm who has little chance of making even the practice squad, but we shall see.
