Injuries Starting To Pile Up at Bears Camp (Wright out now)

He's untradeable this season.  Bears are stuck with him.  No one is giving you a ham sandwich for this guy with his current contract.

It's another example of how FA is so often fools gold.  We fans always want our GM to sign so-and-so every March.  A large proportion of these signings don't work out well.  

I think we are near the point where you have to write him off and bench him.  Maybe he gets one more week to get his ass in gear and practice regularly before being downgraded to "expensive #2".

They need to get working on Plan B right now.

+1
Yeah, that is exactly what I am thinking too.  My concern is that we could have a repeat of last year's start to the season where the OL was a train wreck until we go people back healthy (with playing time together as 1 unit) in the last half of the season.  The first half of the season was butt-ugly OL play.  I went back over the game-by-game grades and stats for last season, just to make sure my old memory wasn't playing games on me.  It wasn't until Week-10 against the Carolina Panthers that the OL looked at least average.  I don't think it is a coincidence that we only had 2 wins that season prior to that game.  And even during that last stretch of wins we had 3 losses where the OL sucked (against Green Bay and Cleveland they blew chunks).

It is going to be a bitter pill to swallow if we need half the season again to get OL players healthy and the unit playing "league average" football.  I understand that some injuries are just inevitable bad luck.  But our OL seems to be a problem most years.  Most years.  That isn't bad luck.  That's a failure to put together a solid OL with solid depth players behind the starters.  Very frustrating for me to watch that year after year.  

Yeah, me too.  

The Davis signing is looking more and more like Poles' worst acquisition.  Unlike Claypool, we are stuck with him for another season.

Guy got paid and ever since has had an endless string of excuses why he can't play or practice.  He reminds me of Alshon Jeffery that last year when he malingered an entire season and was a total pussy.

Larger picture isn't looking good on the OL and its really getting concerning.  Jenkins is made of glass too.  Kiran whatever his name is can't practice either*.  Now Darnell Wright is banged up too.  I think we are getting close to the point where the Bears have to make a decision and stick to it to start the season:

If Connor Williams is ready or nearly ready, yeah you need to bite the bullet and sign him.  Move Bates to RG which is his best position anyway and Davis/Shelton can be your iOL backups.
If CW isn't healthy yet (and the fact that no one has signed him yet suggests he isn't), then I think its close to time to anoint Shelton as the #1 C and Bates as the #1 RG.  Davis and Bill Murray or Kramer can be backups.

It isn't ideal but this constant shifting of Cs and Gs can't be good for getting Caleb the comfort and continuity he needs.  The RS starts in a little over a month.

We are close to the point where you gotta start locking these things down and Davis has shown himself to be utterly unreliable.  Frankly I'd fed up enough to cut him at this point except his dead cap hit is too high.  



*BTW, wtf is Ryan Poles problem with 3rd round picks?  Velus was not a good pick and lots of people said so at the time (age, no hands).  Kiran was another strange choice as well.  A small school, already-injured OL in the 3rd round?  That seems like more of a 5th or 6th round type of pick to me.  He looks like he's heading to an injury redshirt year which is not good value for the high 3rd round.

Man, we all loved Day 1 -- nailed it there -- but the rest of the draft this year left me scratching my head.  A punter in the 4th?  I don't get it.