Ryan Pace botched it with Cameron Meredith, there’s no other explanation.
For those that grace the pages of Bear Goggles On, it’s safe to say that you haven’t found a writer that is a bigger supporter of Ryan Pace than yours truly. I believe in the Pace rebuild. I believe he is an excellent talent evaluator. I think he has this team headed in the right direction. But I will say this loud and clear:
Ryan Pace blew it with Cameron Meredith.
The way Pace handled Kyle Fuller’s situation was borderline masterful and it seemed that he was going to let Meredith play out similarly. Let Meredith find his market, get an offer, and let the market set his price. That’s exactly what happened and that price was 2 years, $10 million. It seemed like a no-brainer to match. One of those years is guaranteed. The Bears could keep Meredith for this year, if his knee doesn’t cut it, he’s released. If he plays well, then the Bears bought Meredith on a reasonable price in year two for $3 million additional in year one. It was a gamble worth taking.
Until the bet was never placed.
The Bears declined the Saints offer sheet to Meredith and let him leave the team and head to New Orleans. This decision tells you the Bears weren’t interested in buying a potentially cheap second year for Meredith. It tells you they were only going to keep him if he was cheap- really cheap.
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From a financial standpoint, matching this deal was easy for the Bears. They have plenty of cap space this year and could easily cut him in 2019 if he didn’t perform this year, but if he did, they’d have him at a great value for 2019.
What the Bears told you is they had no interest in Meredith longterm. That was the only reason not to give him a second-round tender was to try to get him at a reasonable rate for future seasons. The Bears gave him an original round tender worth $1.3 million. If they gave him a second-round tender at $2 million, it would have guaranteed that he stays. That’s hard to believe. The Bears felt Meredith was worth $1.3 million but not worth $2 million.
Cameron Meredith isn’t a superstar. But he is a capable player and if he was healthy, was ready to settle in as the WR2 behind Allen Robinson. But now the Bears have created a massive void at wide receiver. The Bears currently only have 4 wide receivers on the roster and one of them is Josh Bellamy who should really only be considered a special teams player. That means they really only have 3 wide receivers on the roster and one of those is Kevin White. It’s hard to imagine that White can provide the Bears with any kind of legitimate contribution which, if that’s the case, the Bears only have two legitimate wide receivers on the roster with Robinson and Taylor Gabriel.
Yes, the Bears are going to use Trey Burton and Tarik Cohen as receivers in certain packages, and you’ll also see the Bears run plenty of 2 WR, 2 TE packages with Robinson, Gabriel, Burton and Adam Shaheen, but they have really limited themselves in terms of depth.
Chicago Bears
The Bears still have money to spend, but the current free agents remaining are really underwhelming when Willie Snead is the name that jumps off the page. That means the Bears are going to have to fill their wide receiver holes in the draft. There is a cardinal rule in the NFL- you should never enter the draft with holes to fill, you should already have a roster you think is ready for camp and then you build upon it. This is not the case currently for the Bears.
Cameron Meredith is not Jerry Rice. But he’s a solid receiving option. Yes, he has injury concerns, but if he was healthy, the Bears would have had a strong receiving corps that would give Mitch Trubisky plenty of options. Now, not only are the Bears short depth at the receiver position, they are short a starter.
This is a miscalculation by Pace and a bad one at that. He had money to spend and he chose not to spend it because Cameron Meredith’s knee might not recover. If Pace is right and Meredith’s knee doesn’t recover then the Saints are out $5 million. But what if it does? Then he’ll be catching touchdown passes from Drew Brees and the Bears will be praying to the football Gods every day that Kevin White can stay on the field and actually contribute. And nobody, not even a deity, can make that happen.