bmags

Wasn’t really a fan of Larsen. Could have been a Fox issue and he was favored by FO, but certainly liked Kush and Wintzmann more.

I in general agree. However you never know what your window will be. Bears have talented roster but do not have a lot of draft picks, I want to maximize this roster now. With the exception of the patriots and the great job Andy Reid has done, even successful orgs have had basically two reboots in a decade. Look at Philly. Really good decade, two rebuilds in it. Bears cant just trust that trubisky will be elite and carry them during periods where they need to retool.

I guess I don't know how much Houston will go for. But I don't know that Allen was that bad of a signing, though important that Houston is 2 years younger than he was. The bad part was they needed Allen to be a dominant player on a bad defense. For bears, Houston can just be an important veteran for depth that can still get after the QB. He is certainly better than Aaron Lynch.

After manny disappointment I had a dead cat bounce for the first few games of spring training but apathy has definitely washed over especially when I read James Fegan's 25 man preview and realized again what this year will be (eloy will come, yeah I know). If Eloy (forbid) gets injured, this team would be a 55 win team in any other division.

Well, what would have made it cap hell is to splurge guaranteed, long term money on a player that will decline over next 4 years. This isn't ideal, but it really isn't necessarily bad either. There will be june 1st cuts, there are still some names out there. However, as big a fan as I am on the team Pace has built, he is operating more as he did his first few years which got a lot of mid level deals that could be cut. They didn't create structural issues for the bears, but they also didn't add talent. The bears are in a window, you don't want to prematurely shorten it, but you also don't want to put a ceiling on it. This free agency to me is more acceptable if we had 7 draft picks but we only have a hand ful, so I would have preferred they were more aggressive. edit: obviously if they can get houston (I have been busy so don't know if he signed) that's good usage of money to me. You can't have enough pass rushers.)

I think its better and healthier. Prior to it (feb-march) you have the speculation on who the team could sign plus the combine/draft stuff, and then you have the actual moves. It's anticipation/build-up and then big event. In the mlb it's so spread out, the speculation becomes boring and the payout being spread out is less entertaining to me. In two days we got to see what the browns are likely to look like next year and judge those moves against others. You can't judge how mlb teams fared in free agency even into spring training!

I think the bigger bases may be fun. I think finding ways to adding the run game more effectively back into baseball is a good thing. Stolen bases are fun, the players that found incredible value stealing bases were fun. edit: It wasn't mentioned in op but one of the changes is increasing size of bag from 15 inches to 18 inches

I was listening to some sports radio this morning on way to gym, a lot of consensus that Bell came out poorly. I agree in the perception in a team game of doing this is bad, and the contract is less than he initially sought. But the whole reason players hate the franchise tag is even though you get one big year, you are at risk of long term security. It is absolutely likely that he could have had a good year, made that $15(?) million int he bank, and found another $15 milll guaranteed in FA/re-signing. However, he also could have gotten injured or slowed down this year, and then entered free agency as a player people were loathe to give guaranteed cash to. This isn't best case scenario deal, but it also isn't worst case scenario, which would have been playing and having a catastrophic injury.

Takes pressure on needing a playmaker at safety too.

Kinda bummed about bell but pretty sure I’ll be happy about it by end of year 2. Definitely wanted to max out this window pre QB contract though.

I am not sure it would cost that much now that his contract pays him most.

Nowhere near the cache as american ninja warrior host.

I think the ability of nfl players to get more leverage on guaranteed money at least means we may likely have smooth cba negotiations in future.

I still think the CJ Mosely contract is the worst of the offseason, personally. One other thing is it feels like I know a lot of nfl players but then the free agency starts and its all inside linebackers and o lineman and I keep doublechecking if the cardinals signing jordan hicks is a baseball signing or football.

I would let the host of american ninja warrior break all my news, personally

Yeah, gonna be exciting.

Yeah gonna be weird if they just sign cody whitehair, get the cheaper safeties and call it a year. I'd guess Houston because Bell will have longer term cap issues which the mack situation doesn't clear up.

https://www.theringer.com/2018/3/20/17144242/restructuring-contracts-nfl-gamble Yeah check out the Von Miller table here, its virtually the same conversion as Macks was.

The thing about fuer is the org was flying high on their work with Sale. So I think it was mostly a scouting fail but it also punctured the impression we had that we may not have position player development but had top pitcher development.

In fairness to sss, it’s clear their trouble is due to prioritizing paying their writers which is something vox avoids like the plague. Good on the individual editor for trying to do that. I support a lot of Sox media and hopefully their community can find ways to keep them on that mission, but vox will just get people to write for free if they fail.

Obviously I read the post after writing that. Very cool of him to prioritize paying contributors and I wish them the best.

I don’t wish anyone to lose their jobs (if sbnation even pays anyone there which isn’t guaranteed), but when Jim left there was no reason to go to south side Sox and there are plenty of options for Sox content. Had sbnation tried and found a good site lead it probably would have survived, but as it is it’s not at the same level as other Sox blogs.

https://theathletic.com/856960/2019/03/08/he-actually-has-said-that-i-have-a-good-spirit-michael-reinsdorf-talks-jim-boylen-and-much-more/ man this monitor comment is so embarrassing ” I firmly believe that we are staffed really well. That the Bulls, it’s not about cutting costs. John, Gar, his staff, they’re able to cover the college games for us scouting. I did believe that one day, this was like four or five years ago, I walked into Steve Weinman’s office. He was working on one computer. I said, “Steve, you’re our analytics person. Why don’t you have like four screens here?” And he was new and I said, “OK Steve, let’s get you set up.” We expanded his staff this year, we added people.”

I'm kinda over scouting reports on defense. Unless they say they are a wizard on defense they seem to be all over the map based on body projections and the like, until the org moves them off the position it's hard to care.

Correct. Leury did move from terrible offensive player to slightly above average if he could stay healthy so that was decent. Maybe I should move Omar up.