Thread: Bears have placed franchise tag on defensive tackle Henry Melton.

First off Peppers has the sweetest deal going for him right now, why would he want to restructure, maybe he is a nice guy and will, we will just have to wait and see. For every player we cut we have to replace that player so cuts won't give us the millions we just spent on Melton. I am sure Tillman will be more then willing to restructure his deal and maybe Marshall, but then you want to resign Roach. What pissing me off is the Bears haven't made any of these so call restructured deals and even Davis is still on the team, so when are the cuts coming. We have 9 days until FA to get these thing done, 3 million dollar doesn't buy much in FA.

I am not say Melton is a guy we should just let walk what I am saying is where the hell is the money. A lot of teams have already restructured deals and cut players yet the Bears have done nothing to date. In business you make sure you have the money before you spend the money, football is business. Even if they are in talks with players the deals still aren't done. Way too many years the Bears have spent there money on Defense and given the Offense someone else left overs.

All the talk of lately from the Bears is fixing the O line and getting Offense the players it needs and what is our first move to spend most of our CAP on one Defensive player.

Originally Posted by ZenBear

the bears can create cap space if they need to...they had to retain melton, he's the one young, impact player on the defense...he's a building block at a key position, and they'll get a long term deal done at some point...if i'm the bears i lock up roach, cut some dead weight on offense and restructure tillman and peppers...that should give the bears plenty of flexibility in what will be a buyers market in free agency...

Originally Posted by GermansbombedPH

JJ, I want to add that we fired a 10-6 coach because of the bad O while spending all the money on the D so far

So far. The offseason has barely started yet. Retaining a steadily improving pro bowl D-centerpiece who's 26 and entering his prime production years in a system of continuity was a total no-brainer. They've been talking to him since before last RS ended so its pretty clear that a long term deal is being sought, not merely a high-priced one year FT "rental". This just extends the amount of time available to get it done until July w/o the risk of the FA market getting in the way.

I don't understand why there's so much angst about this. It's was as foreseeable as the sun rising in the east tomorrow morning.

Why do I have an issue with this, it not tagging Melton its the fact that the Bears didn't go out and make room in the CAP, especially since like you said they knew they were going to tag him day one unless a LT deal was done. Have we restructured even one deal, hell we haven't even cut Davis and we all thought that would have happen a long time ago. 9 days is not a long time to work out deals and get the money we need, can the Bears do it maybe, but maybe not, and maybe that explain why we haven''t heard anything about deals being done because the players aren't willing to redo their deals with what the Bears are dealing.

Originally Posted by MPBears68

So far. The offseason has barely started yet. Retaining a steadily improving pro bowl D-centerpiece who's 26 and entering his prime production years in a system of continuity was a total no-brainer. They've been talking to him since before last RS ended so its pretty clear that a long term deal is being sought, not merely a high-priced one year FT "rental". This just extends the amount of time available to get it done until July w/o the risk of the FA market getting in the way.

I don't understand why there's so much angst about this. It's was as foreseeable as the sun rising in the east tomorrow morning.

Originally Posted by JJ-30

Why do I have an issue with this, it not tagging Melton its the fact that the Bears didn't go out and make room in the CAP, especially since like you said they knew they were going to tag him day one unless a LT deal was done. Have we restructured even one deal, hell we haven't even cut Davis and we all thought that would have happen a long time ago. 9 days is not a long time to work out deals and get the money we need, can the Bears do it maybe, but maybe not, and maybe that explain why we haven''t heard anything about deals being done because the players aren't willing to redo their deals with what the Bears are dealing.

I posted about this very subject in the "restructuring" thread so I won't repeat it all. But, I agree with you. There's two possibilities: either Emery doesn't intend to be that active in the outside FA market (I doubt he'd surrender that flexibility) or there is more going on behind the scenes than we know. This coming week should give us some visibility on that issue. I'd be pretty surprised if some cap-clearing moves aren't announced soon. But I'm not panicked about it. Emery plays things very close to the vest and no one saw the Marshall deal coming this time last year either. We weren't in the "cap hell" situation that a number of other teams were/are (Philly, NYG, Dallas, etc) so there was no need to act as early as they did.

Finally someone gets it. Since for years we have done what ever we could to make the Defense and ST one of the best in the NFL it time we started giving a damn about the Offense. Just look at the D line and then the O line and tell me which one would like to have if owned an NFL team. We have been trying since 1985 to repeat our win in the SB with Defense and it hasn't worked. Maybe just maybe it time to try something else like build a good Offense and that starts with the Line. We have good WR and RB as well as good QB is too much to ask to have good line to help them win.

Originally Posted by blinddeafmute

Wow, its like we shouldn't do anything unless its on offense. We still have free agency and the draft.