The Chicago Bears should cut Duke Shelley
The savings shouldn’t stop there. Duke Shelley is another player not worth keeping around heading into the 2022 season. The emergence of Thomas Graham proves enough to me that Shelley should go. The sample size with Graham is small, but I saw his potential coming out of the draft and found him to be a better prospect than both Shelley and Kindle Vildor. Vildor should stick around obviously, but Shelley is on the last year of his rookie deal.
Should the Bears decide to cut Shelley, they will save an additional $964,000. That money would be well spent on a new draft pick out of the 2022 NFL draft as opposed to bringing Shelley back. While on the field this year, Shelley was a liability at times.
He played in the slot as the nickel corner and saw 43 targets thrown his way. He allowed 32 of them to be completed for a catch rate of 74.4% when quarterbacks attacked him. He wasn’t pegged for giving up any touchdowns, but quarterbacks enjoyed a 100.0 quarterback rating while throwing in Shelley’s direction. In a smaller sample size, Shelley gave up 80% of his targets to receivers in 2020. He allowed a touchdown and quarterbacks saw a 118.1 quarterback rating while targeting him.
Needless to say, the Chicago Bears need to move on.