Until the NFL and the players’ union reach a new collective bargaining agreement, there are few if any certainties when it comes to free agency.
At this point it’s not known when the period to sign free agents will begin, which players will be on the market, how much the salary cap will be and whether there will be a salary cap at all.
The one thing that is for sure, however, is that the Bears will be prepared to upgrade their roster whenever the dust settles and the guidelines are established.
“Every year when we go into free agency we’re trying to bring in impact players to help our team after we’ve gone through the evaluation process,” coach Lovie Smith said recently at the NFL Combine.
The Bears made the league’s biggest splash a year ago when they signed defensive end Julius Peppers, running back Chester Taylor and tight end Brandon Manumaleuna on the first day of free agency.
A year later, it’s unclear how active they’ll be.
“There [likely will be] players out there who could help our team,”
Smith said. “But as far as are we going to be as active as we were last year, you just have to see how that all plays out.”
General manager Jerry Angelo isn’t sure whether the Bears will be able to land the NFL’s marquee free agent like they did last year when they signed Peppers.
“Can we get the big fish? I don’t know,”
Angelo said at the Combine. “I haven’t seen the bait yet, and until I know how much bait we can put on the hook, I don’t know that we can get the big fish. That’s going to be determined once we have a clear understanding of where the cap is.”
Angelo doesn’t want to be in a position where the Bears are consistently doling out the most lucrative free agent contract in the NFL like they did last year with Peppers.
“It’s a difficult thing to do,”
Angelo said. “You don’t want to come out every year having to spend big chunks of money on one player. That’s not the goal. But [with Peppers] we determined that was a unique situation.”
"That was really an aberration of free agency. We thought he was a special player. Obviously he was a fit. He was a need and we felt like that was the right thing. We’re not going to get stuck in a philosophy where we miss the big picture. But again that’s not really something we set out to do each and every year.”
Another thing that Angelo won’t do is claim that the Bears are one player away from a championship.
“I don’t really want to do that,”
Angelo said. “When you start doing that, you miscalculate. You misevaluate your football team. I have seen teams do that. I have been part of teams that have done that. That hit-or-miss rarely hits, so we don’t want to get into that mindset.“
“When we do things, there’s got to be a plan in place. But we don’t want to go into [believing], ‘Hey, it’s that one guy, it’s desperate.’ … We’re not one player away. We need to get better at [multiple] positions. We need to upgrade, create more competition and then we’ve got to come together as a team.”
