The Chicago Bears land a top offensive tackle in mock offseason moves

The Chicago Bears should look to extend these players to similar deals

The team has a few pending free agents who I am going to want to retain. James Daniels has proven worthy enough of an extension and is still only 24 years old.

• James Daniels, OG – 3-year extension / $21,000,000 (2022 Cap Hit: $4,000,000)
• Bilal Nichols, DE – 3-year extension / $18,500,000 (2022 Cap Hit: $3,500,000)
• Jesse James, TE – 1-year extension / $2,800,000 (2022 Cap Hit: $1,800,000)

I am letting punter, Pat O’Donnell go this year unless he takes the veteran minimum of $1.2 million. However, I would bring back the following players on veteran minimum contracts:

• Patrick Scales, LS
• Joel Iyiegbuniwe, ILB
• DeAndre Houston-Carson, S
• J.P. Holtz, TE
• Alex Bars, OL
• Sam Mustipher, C
• Lachavious Simmons, OT
• Jalen Tabor, CB
• Deon Bush, S

After these moves, the team has roughly $13 million left in salary cap space. Not much to use on splash free agents for the defense, but there’s enough spending going on over there already. After these signings, the team would be at 43 players in their top-51 and that’s not including any of the rookies who make the final roster.

This means $13 million is plenty because remember, I already accounted for the rookie draft picks. I won’t try and guess as to which other veteran players the team would sign to minimum deals, but maybe one solid defensive free agent signing is in the cards after all?

By the way, if Akiem Hicks is willing to take a very team-friendly deal and come back for one more season, I’d definitely entertain that too. However, the contract would need to be incentives-based and quite frankly the team couldn’t afford to pay more than $3 million against the cap, meaning the deal is likely to be in the $5 to $8 million dollar range. Will he accept that? Doubtful.