What Combine did (and didn't do) for Bears: DE

What Combine did (and didn't do) for Bears: DE

What Combine did (and didn't do) for Bears: DE

February 28, 2012, 12:33 pm SHARE THIS POST

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Moon, Matt Bowen at the combine John 'Moon' Mullin and National Football Post's Matt Bowen discuss the Bears biggest needs at the NFL combine - 2/23

http://www.csnchicago.com/common/med...158/610698.png	JOHN "MOON" MULLIN http://www.csnchicago.com/common/med...158/610664.png Bio & archive

Lovie Smith made it abundantly clear in his remarks in Indy that there is a search on for a pass-rushing end. Re-signing Amobi Okoye will give the Bears what they view as a very strong young nucleus at tackle (Okoye, Henry Melton, Stephen Paea, Matt Toeaina) but beyond Julius Peppers, the Bears don’t have a true edge threat.

Former NFL safety and National Football Post analyst Matt Bowen chatted with me during the Combine and the conclusion was that the Bears can get more impact from a rookie rush end than a receiver.

Besides, the price tag on pass rushers like Mario Williams in Houston will be Peppers-like, more than the Bears can manage even with some cap flexibility.

Matt’s top call for an end is Quinton Coples, a North Carolina Tarheel like Peppers. Coples is Pro Football Weekly’s top-rated end, followed by Melvin Ingram from South Carolina, Nick Perry from USC and Whitney Mercilus out of Illinois. Alabama linebacker Courtney Upshaw is rated a first-rounder at defensive end by many analysts.

Conclusion: The Combine likely helped all of these top prospects, with excellent individual workouts to go with strong college production resumes. The Bears should grab one of these, even if it costs a little to leapfrog Cincinnati at No. 17, also expected to be after defensive-line help.

What helps the Bears here is what happened elsewhere in the talent pool. Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin will go 1-2. USC tackle Matt Kalil will be a top-10 pick. Blackmon and possibly two defensive tackles will go top 15, plus Alabama safety Mark Barron and LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne.

That’s eight players at positions or grade levels that the Bears weren’t going to go after anyway. With those and possibly the five defensive ends, by rough calculation the Bears could have their Peppers bookend come sundown on Apr. 26.

I'd still rather have MWill. Mullins says the Bears can't manage a contract for him, but it sounds like they could. It's just a matter of if they WANT to. Sure it'll limit who else they can sign, but like Soul said in another thread, they're probably gonna get the most bang for the buck with Williams.

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Originally Posted by Papa Bear

I'd still rather have MWill. Mullins says the Bears can't manage a contract for him, but it sounds like they could. It's just a matter of if they WANT to. Sure it'll limit who else they can sign, but like Soul said in another thread, they're probably gonna get the most bang for the buck with Williams.

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I agree. Williams absolutely needs to be the Bears' #1 priority. They can make it work.

There are some really good prospects to look at in the first round but the only one who comes even close to matching the potential ability to dominate like Pep does is Coples and he won't get past #10. The others are very good players but probably more at the level of a Cliff Avril. Very good but not dominant like a Peppers is.

The one guy out there who could be nearly a clone of Pep and is years younger is MWill. Saying the Bears can't manage to land him because of $$$ can't be accurate. Following the release of AA the Bears should have somewhere in the vicinity of $30 mil of cap excess to put to work. If the Bears can't afford him then MWill better hope a teams like KC or the Bucs do since those are teams with $40 mil plus of operating room.

The key feature of any contract is it's structure. In Pep's case we took a $35 mil cap hit on an $84 mil deal in year one because we had no cap limitations to deal and so that he wouldn't becomes too expensive later on. This year his cap value is only $11.3 mil. The lowest it will ever be. Now add to that our core of DT's. The 2012 cap value of Toe, Melton, and Paea combined is around $3 mil plus whatever Okoye's will be if he stays in Chicago so for the sake of argument let's say it's another $3 mil. That's $6 mil total for four players or roughly $2 mil less than the cost of franchise tag for one DT.

So with Pep and the DT's except Okoye their combined cap value is just over $14 mil and if we add in Okoye at another $3 mil we have $17 mil or about 13% of expected cap limit. Add Wootton's $600k and another $2.4 for Izzy and the whole line tops out at $20 mil or a bit more than 15% of the total cap for all 8 players. Sorry Moon but there's room for MWill if they want him that badly.

I would not let the sun set on the opening day of FA without signing MWill if there is any way that it can be done. If ever there was a perfect compliment to Pep it would be him. Imagine teams trying to figure out a way to contend with an outside rush from those two. Even Aaron Rodgers will find it tough to escape from two DE's of that size and ability and with the speed of a linebacker.

Drafting a DE upgrades the pass rush which we do need to do put signing MWill pushes us over the top and frees up that choice for another position. Teams don't normally get a shot at DE's the caliber of Pep more than once in a decade and we've got the chance to catch lightening in a bottle twice. This is were Phil Emery can make his mark and serve notice to 31 other teams that the Bears are comin' after a Championship.