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The Bears made a major splash in free agency last year with the early signing of Lamarr Houston and the late signing of Jared Allen. Neither move worked out as planned for the Bears, but both players will be back next year and hopefully live up to their substantial contracts. A third DE, Willie Young, was the least expensive of the three DEs signed and turned out to be the most productive. Hopefully the Bears learned a lesson that signing older players to big contracts rarely works out. Free agency isn’t a viable route to team building, unless the Bears can find young players with upside on affordable contracts like they did with Young. The Bears only have roughly $30M in cap room, not counting their own free agents and draft picks, so they won’t have room to make big signings like last year anyway.
The Bears won’t have much money to spend, but they will have enough for a few affordable free agents. I covered some potential fits for the defense earlier this week and will be moving on to the offense today. It was considered a strength coming into the 2014 season, but finished 21st in points per game with only 19.9. Averaging less than 20 points per game and never breaking 30 points in a game all season are pretty clear signs that changes need to be made. The biggest change will be at offensive coordinator, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the offense has a few new starters in 2015.
The ideal target of a rebuilding team should be players coming off of their rookie deals that have been under-utilized, playing out of position or in the wrong scheme. With the rebuild under way there should be a few open spots in the starting lineup and the Bears could put these players in a position to succeed and perhaps unearth a few gems. If not, the price tag will be relatively low on most of these players and the risk minimal. I will get into specific targets in depth this off-season, but here are a few players are each offensive position that could be a good fit:
Quarterback:
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QB Jake Locker (26), Titans – The pickings are slim for free agent quarterbacks, but the Bears need to at least bring in competition for Cutler if not his replacement. Any QB available this off-season will have some significant flaws, but Locker at least has upside. He has all the tools to be a starting QB with a cannon arm, running back speed, and good size. The former first round pick is a great athlete, but has struggled with his accuracy, progressing through reads, and staying healthy. His untapped talent may lead a team to overspend on Locker, but his injury history and lack of accuracy should keep the price reasonable ($3M?).
QB Austin Davis (26), Rams – I’m not sure why the Rams benched Davis in favor of journeyman Shaun Hill. Davis had completed 63.5% of his passes with an acceptable 12 TD / 9 INT ratio in 8 starts. The Rams were just 3-5 in those 8 games, but that is the same record they had in non-Davis starts. He doesn’t have a great arm, but can make most NFL throws and is a good fit for the Rams psuedo West Coast offense. Davis throws an accurate ball, has shown the ability to progress through his reads, and displayed some strong leadership traits in his half season of starts. I think Davis would make an ideal backup for the often inaccurate Cutler.