How bad is the Bears’ cap situation in 2021? A Q&A with Brad Spielberger from Pro Football Focus

Welcome to what could be the messiest offseason in recent NFL memory.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic fallout has left nearly every NFL team scrambling to free salary cap space in 2021. The exact NFL salary cap for next season has to be worked out between the league and the NFL Players Association. What we do know is it will be no lower than $175 million, could be as high as $195 million, and most likely will wind up somewhere in the middle.

This creates problems across the league because teams generally operate under the assumption that the cap will rise between about 5% to 10% year over year. The 2020 salary cap was $198.2 million. A year ago, teams had expected for it to rise to about $210 million by 2021 and planned accordingly. Now, numerous teams will have to deal with the fallout of a cap that is going to be $20 million (or more) lower than they anticipated.

So what does all this mean for the 2021 Chicago Bears? OverTheCap.com projects the Bears 2021 salary cap number to be about $193 million, which likely will be over the cap already. That’s without a new quarterback and without wide receiver Allen Robinson.

When team chairman George McCaskey and president/CEO Ted Phillips announced general manager Ryan Pace was coming back for another year, they essentially handed him a jigsaw puzzle and said, “Figure it out.” GMs across the league are dealing with the same thing.

But if the NFL salary cap is a jigsaw puzzle, there are multiple ways to solve it. There’s always avenues to create cap space, primarily through cutting players, contract restructuring and extensions, and trades.

To sort it all out for the Bears, Shaw Media spoke with Brad Spielberger, a salary cap analyst at Pro Football Focus and a contributor to OverTheCap. His short assessment of the Bears’ cap situation is: “It’s not a great situation, but there’s a path ahead.” You can find Spielberger on Twitter at @PFF_Brad.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length:

Being over the cap already is not a great starting point, but the Bears are middle of the pack compared to teams around the league. So how bad is this situation?

Spielberger: “Purely from just looking at the cap and nothing else, they have ways to clear space – a decent amount of space that will make things easier for them to operate. But the reason why I say it’s kind of dire is that they still need to add all the pricey positions. WR1s and quarterbacks are the two most expensive positions in the NFL. So yes, they can create a bunch of room, there are some fairly obvious cut candidates and guys that they could extend, like a Kyle Fuller or Akiem Hicks.”

If you’re making cap cuts, who is on the chopping block?

Spielberger: ”The obvious ones right away: Jimmy Graham and Buster Skrine. And then the last one is Bobby Massie. I shouldn’t say obvious. I actually don’t think he was all that bad this year, but at this point he’s over 30, and he’s missed eight games this year and six games the year before, so health’s a bit of a question mark. Basically, if you were to cut those three guys and designate one of them a post-June 1 cut – which helps you create more room, it’s what they did with Trey Burton this past offseason – you can clear about $17.5 million right there.”

(Note to readers: Sometimes it’s advantageous to cut a player after June 1 because a team can spread the cap hit over two years instead of one. According to OverTheCap, cutting Graham would save about $7 million in cap space, and there’s no advantage in waiting until June. Skrine would save $2.8 million if cut before June 1 or $5 million if cut after. Massie would save $5.4 million before June 1 or $8 million after.)

Is there a path to sign Robinson and also sign a free agent quarterback?

Spielberger: “The beauty of when you sign a multiyear deal, you can backload that contract and have as small as possible a cap hit in the first year. I almost think Robinson has leverage because if they franchise tag him and won’t give him the deal he wants, that’s an $18 million stamp on the 2021 cap. That could be 10% of the whole cap. So the way you do it for both [a quarterback and Robinson] is only if, in my opinion, both are signed to multiyear extensions, and then you can backload those contracts.”

Speaking of extensions, who are candidates on the Bears’ roster for an extension or a restructured deal?

Spielberger: That’s going to be a necessity. I think every team’s going to do it with a bunch of guys. But the Bears, COVID or not, I think that Eddie Jackson’s contract was set up in such a way that they were going to restructure it regardless. You could go the Mack route again. The bank of Khalil Mack, continue to restructure his deal, there’s no reason not to. You’re not going to cut him. He’s going to be here for a while. You tend to not want to push money down the line, but with a Khalil Mack, you’re probably more comfortable doing that. If they extended Fuller and Hicks, if they do those four moves, they can clear $30-plus million.

If Pace and the Bears are trying to win now, what does that look like?

Spielberger: “You have to assume they are. The scary part is more that they have all the incentive to go all in because their jobs are on the line. What it looks like is probably they make a move for a veteran quarterback. I think a Jimmy Garoppolo, maybe try Derek Carr again. [Carr is] probably not going to happen, he had a really good season, the time to do that was probably last offseason.

“Another smart move – and I say smart from their perspective, from a job security perspective – is if you’re going to let a GM and a coach trade up in the draft or even stay at 20 and take a Mac Jones, it’s kind of strange to let them do that and then get rid of them a year later. They can quote-unquote ‘go all in’ by getting that next quarterback of the future and then as long as he shows some signs of progress, they can sell themselves to McCaskey again.”

Do the Bears have even a remote shot at Deshaun Watson?

Spielberger: “In my opinion, no. I think it’s kind of the killer of the playoff run. You should do that, try to win as many games as possible, but if their draft pick was top 10 instead of 20, then my answer to the question would be different. The issue is if you’re Houston, you say, ‘OK, it’ll be 20 this year, and that Bears roster with Deshaun Watson should [lead to a worse draft pick] the next couple years.’ That’s the problem.

“The issues is you give up three first-round picks, maybe even more than that, you get Deshaun Watson and you pay Allen Robinson, at that point you might turn into the Houston Texans of this season because it’s hard to fill out the rest of your roster.

If the Bears go for a veteran like Garoppolo, what would they have to give up?

Spielberger: “Garoppolo you could probably buy pretty low on at this point. I don’t think you’d have to give up a player. You could bring him in for draft picks. What you could do there is, whether it’s a true extension or whether it’s an extension that adds void years to his contract ... try to push some of his money down the line.”

What if the Bears want to make room through a trade?

Spielberger: “This is a great question to where it depends on what the motivations are for Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy. If they do have a directive that they need to win as many games as possible in 2021 to keep their jobs, then they’re not going to do this. But if they have the directive of: ‘Set the team up well for the future, we’re not just judging you off a one-year record,’ then you should explore a trade for probably Akiem Hicks and Kyle Fuller. Both are phenomenal players, still paying at a high level. I’m picking them for contractual reasons, not for production reasons.

“Hicks, you’d save about $11 million if someone else were to take on his salary. You’d probably get maybe a fifth-round pick. That’s going off the Calais Campbell trade from last offseason as a benchmark. Then with Fuller, it kind of looks like the A.J. Bouye trade. So two Jaguars, they both got traded last offseason. The Broncos traded a fourth to the Jaguars for Bouye. Fuller’s maybe a little better than A.J. Bouye, so you can maybe get a late second or a third-round pick, maybe a third and a sixth or something. Both moves clear about $11 million in cap space.

“The counterpoint is then you’re giving up a high-level starter on your defense. So are you trying to compete next year? If you are, maybe not the best idea.”