If think Fox wants to roll with Hoyer and a rookie. Sadly I could see Hoyer-rookie-Shaw as the next three. Actually it will be Hoyer-Shaw with the rookie on the PS. With the way this team turned out if Fox wants to keep his job he has to be 500 or over next season.
And I believe that if we don't finish at least .500 this year he shouldn't get to keep his job.
Actually it will be Hoyer-Shaw with the rookie on the PS.
It better not be.
If the QB we drafted makes it to the PS...that QB would have to be some 6th round bum. If Pace releases Cutler and only invests a late round pick in another QB, I will go down to Halas Hall and break his nose myself.
I be there to help. A plan like that makes no sense at all if you plan to build a potential championship team. Hoyer can't play well enough to allow even a team with a top defense to be much more than a .500 ball club. Shaw is a complete unknown whose had far too little experience to know what we have in him yet and unless we get Dak Prescott type lucky no mid round pick is likely to be much better than those two.
If the idea is to complete a turn around is quickly as possible that would be a terrible approach. We'd essentially have an entire offense run by backup level QBs.
+1 If we draft a QB crappy enough to even MAKE it to the practice squad, then that's a big downer to me. It's time to cough up a bigtime draft pick on a guy so good that you wouldn't dream of putting him at risk on the PS. I'm tired of the David Fales, Nathan Enderle, Dan LeFevour types. Pace needs to pull up his big boy pants and draft us a QB for the post-Cutler era. I'm fine if the youngster holds a clipboard next year for Cutler, but at least get the guy in the pipeline.
You're going to be waiting a while then. Unless something changes the QBs in the 2017 draft are marginal prospects at best. What's worse is many teams are still hungry for any new QB they can get. So it's likely any QBs with any upside at all will be taken early leaving little to no talent in the latter rounds.
Which is all the more reason not to move on from what we have before we've secured someone who could be better and very quickly too. There are no guarantees a top QB pick will even be close to being ready to start and win immediately.
Goff is still sitting behind Case Keenum whose the #32 ranked NFL starter right now and after winning his first 3 games Carson Wentz has lost 4 of his last five games and thrown more picks than TDs in the process. Prescott is still the top performing QB from the 2016 draft and we could have picked him in the 4th round but passed.
So once again I say just how great have the Bears ever been at drafting QB talent?
Falling: Carson Wentz
The good news is that Carson Wentz threw for 364 yards, a rookie record for the Eagles. The bad news is that 357 of those yards came after Wentz threw two interceptions and essentially handed the Giants a 14-0 lead a little more than five minutes into a game the Eagles would eventually lose 28-23.
Since throwing 134 passes without an interception to start his career, Wentz has thrown five interceptions and just four touchdown passes in the last five games. The Eagles (4-4) have lost four of those five and currently occupy last place in the NFC East.
Wentz’s counterpart, Eli Manning, did his best to help Wentz put together the first game-winning drive of his career. With the Giants (5-3) leading 28-23, Manning threw an interception in Giants territory, giving the Eagles the ball at the Giants’ 34 with just under two minutes left.
After completing a 17-yard pass to Nelson Agholor, however, Wentz failed to complete his last four passes and the Eagles lost the ball on downs.
Wentz completed just 3 of his last 11 passes. He finished with 27 completions on 47 attempts with no touchdowns.
Now he knows what it’s like to be a rookie in the NFL.
Maybe I'm crazy (I am a White Sox fan so....) but I just can't see a scenario where Cutler is here next season.
Cutler is gone because Pace wants a new QB (rookie/FA) to have a clear path to the starting job. That only makes sense if you can draft a QB whose ready to start immediately and the odds of that are slim.
Cutler is gone because Fox wants Hoyer to start giving Fox a way to win games playing ball control with little risk. But that won't work. We've already seen that approach fail so why do it again. It eventually failed in Denver too.
About the only way I see Cutler here is if there is no one in the draft Pace likes and Pace forces Cutler on to Fox. Which is exactly what Pace needs to pull up his big boy GM britches and do just like Elway did with Manning here in Denver.
I keep batting around a post about how Pace/Fox/fans all see and value the future differently. Maybe when I can finally get settled in tonight I'll string something together.
This is one where Pace needs to assume command of his team. Like it or not he's higher in the pecking order than Fox and he needs to show that. This isn't about what Fox wants because even Fox doesn't seem to know. This about what's best for the Bears.
It seems like we hear every year how bad the QB draft class is. But it's not always an accurate prediction. If Pace is the "real deal" as a GM, then he needs to be able to draft - especially at QB. Yes, it's not easy to draft well in the NFL. But if Pace can't get it done as our GM then we need somebody who can.
Cutler won't last forever. And frankly, if Pace won't even try to draft the position, then of course we'll never get a franchise QB. And I'm tired of the old David Fales, Nathan Enderle, Dan LeFevour types. Wannabee's. If we truly want a franchise QB then we have to pony-up a high draft pick.
For some perspective let's look at the two drafts we traded our first rounders to get Cutler. I know people still grumble about the trade but look what our choices would have been had we used one of those picks on a QB. Do you see anyone in there other than maybe Stafford, or Bradford even, that you would like as a QB? And both of those guys were no. 1 picks.
2009 Draft
1 1 Detroit Lions Matthew Stafford † QB Georgia SEC 1 5 New York Jets Mark Sanchez QB USC Pac-10 from Cleveland [R1 - 1] 1 17 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Josh Freeman QB Kansas State Big 12 from New York Jets via Cleveland[R1 - 2] 2 44 Miami Dolphins Pat White QB West Virginia Big East from Washington [R2 - 6] 4 101 Dallas Cowboys Stephen McGee QB Texas A&M Big 12 from Detroit [R4 - 1] 5 151 New York Giants Rhett Bomar QB Sam Houston St. Southland from New Orleans[R5 - 7] 5* 171 San Francisco 49ers Nate Davis QB Ball State MAC 6 174 Denver Broncos Tom Brandstater QB Fresno State WAC from Detroit 6 178 Seattle Seahawks Mike Teel QB Rutgers Big East 6 196 St. Louis Rams Keith Null QB West Texas A&M Lone Star from Atlanta[R6 - 10] 6 201 Indianapolis Colts Curtis Painter QB Purdue Big Ten
2010 Draft
1 1 St. Louis Rams Sam Bradford QB Oklahoma Big 12 1 25 Denver Broncos Tim Tebow QB Florida SEC from Baltimore [R1 - 8] 2 48 Carolina Panthers Jimmy Clausen QB Notre Dame Ind. (FBS) 3 85 Cleveland Browns Colt McCoy QB Texas Big 12 from New England via Oakland[R3 - 4] 4 122 Philadelphia Eagles Mike Kafka QB Northwestern Big Ten from Green Bay[R4 - 12] 5 155 Arizona Cardinals John Skelton QB Fordham Patriot from Philadelphia via New York Jets and Pittsburgh[R5 - 13] 5* 168 San Diego Chargers Jonathan Crompton QB Tennessee SEC 6 176 Tennessee Titans Rusty Smith QB Florida Atlantic Sun Belt from Seattle[R6 - 5] 6 181 Chicago Bears Dan LeFevour QB Central Michigan MAC 6 199 Minnesota Vikings Joe Webb QB UAB C-USA 6* 204 Carolina Panthers Tony Pike QB Cincinnati Big East 7 209 Buffalo Bills Levi Brown QB Troy Sun Belt from Detroit [R7 - 2] 7 239 New Orleans Saints Sean Canfield QB Oregon State Pac-10 7* 250 New England Patriots Zac Robinson QB Oklahoma State Big 12
I want a great QB too but finding one is not just knowing when to pull the trigger but also a fair amount of luck. We can certainly draft some QBs and hope for the best, but you're going to want to hold on to Cutler as long as possible because the odds are heavily stacked against finding someone in the draft better then him whatever his faults.
Regardless whether Pace has an eye for talent for talent or not, that QB may end up getting drafted by someone else before he can do anything. Sometimes there are no good options.
Amen Payton!!!
I've lost track of how long I've been making this same point. The primary reason we made the trade was both our previous track record at drafting QBs AND the lack of other alternatives. Some continue to say we over paid. How? Essentially all he cost us was one extra 1st round pick because we'd have had to spend a 1st to draft him instead of Denver anyway. Knox was more than a fair exchange of a 3rd for a 5th and Orton was never more than a #2 level QB much like Hoyer yet he was the key to the deal for them.
So assume we never made the trade. Could we have drafted Stafford? No, and even if we had has he won more often than Cutler? No How about Bradford? No again and not only has he not won more often than Cutler but he's been hurt more often too. Both have also been far more costly that Cutler as well because they were drafted before the new CBA limited rookie contracts.
Which then leaves us with looking at a list of failed picks or those who certainly have not even done as well as Cutler. These are facts but far too many choose instead to believe in news articles and or talking head shows where facts are the last thing they want to bring up. It's too much work to do the research and far easier to simply spout an opinion that by now most will buy into.
Well I don't. I prefer the facts and the facts tell me that we could have done and could continue to do a whole lot worse than Cutler because almost without exception we always have. I simply won't trust this team to draft a better QB until I've actually seen them do it. So let's put all these neat theories aside for a change and look at the facts. About the only team whose been even worse at drafting QBs than we've been is Cleveland. So how do we change that fact?
we can luck out in the draft, but to have this luck we should starting to actually pick QBs in the draft.
Exactly because to think we'll actually hit a home run with the "right guy" on our first swing is defying all previous odds that say we won't. The odds say we'll end up with one or two second tier types before we find that one whose better than Cutler.
I am truly in favor of trading again as much as I am drafting looking for a QB who fits our needs better than those of the team who drafted him. A QB whose been in the league for a couple of years is less of a pig in a poke than a rookie with little or no experience in a pro style offense.
Or we may do just as well taking a QB after round one as we will gambling a higher pick on a guy who isn't rated all that highly. Teams with no viable starter are forced to do that but we aren't one of them unless we turn ourselves into one so why do it?
