2023 Off-Season Primer: Plenty of Money, Plenty of Needs

It says we need 11 starters added in 2023.  And 12 starters added if by chance they move on from LG Whitehair who's play quality plummeted this year.  That is just starters needed.   We need better depth too. 

It is pretty sobering - staggering - to see how radical the teardown was this year.  I can not remember a time in the past 60 or so seasons when the Bears needed a dozen starters added to the roster.

And keep in mind, the team needs starter-quality players.  Not just playing deadbeats as starters like the Bears did this season.  Quality players and not crap players - the "hope and a prayer" guys who struggle and fail on gamedays.  12 quality starters, and also better depth players.

We may all disagree on the exact number of players critically needed, but the fact we all can agree on is that the Bears have the worst roster talent in the NFL - that is evident in having the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft.  Talent-wise the team is on life support.  Consequently, the Bears don't have the luxury of using that #1 pick on a single player.  They have to leverage that so that they can get as many quality starters as they can.  Personally, I don't believe the Bears can afford Anderson or Carter.  I think it would be irresponsible to pursue that.  If they do, then all bets are off as far as being a rebuilt team in 2024.  It adds (at least) one more year to the roster rebuild.  JMO.

I think reality is setting in for a lot of people.  Successful teardowns/rebuilds require stacking a 2-3 good drafts together to really bear fruit.  

I do think we can be much better next year, maybe even sneak into a WC, but it's gonna take until 2024-25 for us to become a real contender and even that requires a lotta things to go right.  

There's way more holes than can realistically be filled this offseason, even with tons of cap space plus the #1 pick.

Yeah.  Even if we had an epic trade down in this draft, and do well in FA, there is so much work to do.  There's going to have to be some good luck involved too (and hopefully not too much bad luck) with the rebuild.  Poles won't hit .1000 no matter what happens.  Some mistakes will be made.  Even if Poles ends up being a great GM he will still make his share of mistakes.  You just "do the math" and I agree with you.  There are too many holes to fill for a short turnaround.  I just don't see it.  But.  But, I do feel like the team could be a ton better next year.  

No, it wasn't.  It was caused by PACE & NAGY.  

Poles just cleaned up the mess they left.  We carried more dead cap in 2022 than we did in active player contracts--let that sink in for a minute.  Other than perhaps Roquan (assuming you could have re-signed him) not a single one of the players he let go that you seem to pine away for would still be here playing at a high level by 2024-25.  Some of them sucked and underperformed even in 2022 (Quinn, Robinson) and some of them are out of the league already (Goldman, Trevathan).  To make an omlette, you have to break some eggs.

As for the Jags, yeah that's a reasonable goal for 2023 but keep in mind they benefitted from being in a very weak division.