The 2021 NFL offseason is in full swing right now as the NFL Draft is now in the books. The Chicago Bears came away with one of the better-viewed outcomes. Ryan Pace was able to find a quarterback prospect that projects to be a franchise quarterback. The Mitch Trubisky experiment failed, but Pace got another chance and this time he brought in Ohio State’s former quarterback Justin Fields.
I will continue to say it over and over, Justin Fields is going to be the second-best, if not the best quarterback from this class. He has been my QB2 for all but two weeks when I fell into the media hype train that was Zach Wilson. I realized that I needed to trust my own process and instantly put Fields back as the second-best quarterback prospect and third-best prospect in this draft. The first goes to Trevor Lawrence and the second goes to Kyle Pitts.
As soon as the draft was over, I anticipated the team would have to make a cut or two. One of those cuts was going to likely be Charles Leno, Akiem Hicks or Jimmy Graham. The reason for this is because these three cleared the most cap space and the team needs between $7 and $8 million to sign their draft picks.
The Chicago Bears had to let Charles Leno go for salary cap reasons
The first Monday after the draft was not the day I thought we would see one of these three go. I thought they’d wait a bit and see what the team had to offer. Apparently, I was wrong. Yesterday afternoon, Charles Leno was given his pink slip and sent packing. The humble guy that Leno is, took to social media and spoke about the process and even said he’ll be rooting for the young guys who are entering the league — acknowledging he was once one of those guys.
https://twitter.com/charleslenojr72/status/1389256241273315329?s=20
The Chicago Bears will save roughly $9 million in cap savings after designating Charles Leno as post-June 1st cut. This essentially allows the Chicago Bears the ability to spread the dead cap hit out over two seasons as opposed to one. This amount alone will cover what the team needs for the rookie draft class, but will it be enough in the end? I am fairly confident this will not be the last player we see let go prior to the start of the 2021 NFL season, but that’s for a different day.