Chicago Bears: Realistic approach to building a better offense

It’s no question the Chicago Bears need major help on their offense. In the past two seasons, the Bears were 26th in 2020 and 29th in 2019 respectively in total offense. There are plenty of people you can place blame on from Mitchell Trubisky to Matt Nagy, but we are stuck with Nagy and need to move forward with him for at least this season.

The only issue with their lack of offensive firepower is that the Bears don’t have much in terms of cap space to make their moves. They currently sit at roughly -$1.8 million in cap space according to Spotrac and they will likely need to make some cuts and restructure some contracts to get some money to make moves.

There are plenty of things they can do to make their cap space reasonable, but in doing so, they will need to replace talent too. I’m going to breakdown each position group and how I’d like their rooms to look next season.

Two new faces in the Chicago Bears quarterback room

1. Jameis Winston (FA)
2. Nick Foles
3. Jamie Newman (R)

It’s hard to imagine that Jameis Winston wants to leave the New Orleans Saints, but the Bears should have more flexibility to offer Winston more money than the Saints can. Plus, Winston may feel upset that the Saints benched him for Taysom Hill when Drew Brees went down. Winston can save the Bears some money and bring a fun, gunslinger mentality aspect to the Bears’ offense. He should be the Bears’ primary free agent target if Dak Prescott gets the franchise tag.

Nick Foles needs to stay as solid backup insurance. He isn’t too expensive and he’s under contract. Nothing much the Bears can do about it. If Winston flops, Foles is solid insurance to play for him or come in if Winston gets injured at all.

In the fifth round, it would be nice if Jamie Newman fell to the Bears. He is a great athlete with a lot of impressive physical traits. He needs plenty of work if he is ever to pan out as a quarterback in the NFL, but he’s definitely worth the shot in the dark given his upside. If he can turn into at least a solid backup quarterback, that’s a win for the Bears. Here’s my report on Newman.

Having this quarterback room doesn’t jump out instantly, but it is the most reasonable and realistic for the Bears. Other options aren’t as good, don’t have the upside, or require draft capital for a project quarterback. Having Newman learn behind these two quarterbacks and sit could be good for him. At the very least, Winston makes this team a lot of fun as he isn’t shy about throwing the ball everywhere.