With the way their salary cap lines up right now, I doubt we’ll see the Chicago Bears be big players in free agency, but they will make room for one major acquisition (i.e., a quarterback) if the opportunity presents itself.
The Bears are still interested in Russell Wilson, and probably every other available QB, but it takes two to tango and right now the dance floor is empty.
The league year officially opens up on Wednesday, March 17 at 3:00 p.m. CT, and that’s when all trades and free agent signings can be announced, and also when teams must be under the salary cap, so we should see plenty of movement the next 48 hours.
Today the always wild early negotiating period will kick off at 11:00 a.m. CT (not 3:00 p.m. as the league originally reported), and we’ll keep track of all the rumors and news right here in this tracker.
News and Rumors
- Brad Biggs is reporting that the Khalil Mack restructure will give the Bears a cap hit of $30.3M in 2022. (link)
- Washington could be bringing in Mitchell Trubisky to compete with former UDFA QB Taylor Heinicke. (link)
- On the NFL Network, Ian Rapoport reported that the Bears are interested in Andy Dalton, but also that they are in on every available QB, so nothing to see here…
- Brad Biggs believes there’s a scenario where the Bears target Jameis Winston. (link)
The Bears have already made a few moves to create some cap space including restructuring Khalil Mack, Eddie Jackson, and Cody Whitehair (link), they released Bobby Massie and Buster Skrine, but they have also added some salary as well. They franchise tagged Allen Robinson, they re-signed Mario Edwards Jr., Cairo Santos, and Patrick O’Donnell, and they re-signed several exclusive rights free agents.
The deadline for teams to exclusively negotiate and re-sign their own free agents is today at 11:00 a.m. CT, so once that passes here are all the Chicago players that will now be able to negotiate with other teams.
Chicago Bears 2021 Free Agents
Mitchell Trubisky, QB
Cordarrelle Patterson, WR
Dwayne Harris, WR
DeAndre Carter, WR
Demetrius Harris, TE
Jason Spriggs, T
Germain Ifedi, OL
Rashaad Coward, OL – It was reported the Bears were not bringing Coward back.
Roy Robertson-Harris, DL – It’s expected the Bears will not re-sign RRH.
Brent Urban, DL
Daniel McCullers, DL
John Jenkins, NT
Deon Bush, S
Sherrick McManis, DB
Tashaun Gipson, S
Artie Burns, CB
DeAndre Houston-Carson, S
Michael Joseph, CB
Barkevious Mingo, OLB
Eddy Pineiro, K
Patrick Scales, LS
