Cutting Fuller might fix the salary cap but could mortally wound the defense
I'm still trying to understand what the Bears were doing about their salary cap mess and scratching my head.
According to league rules all 32 teams had to be at or below the cap at 3 p.m. Wednesday based on the total of their 51 highest paid players.
Massaging it as best I could - knowing they'd saved about $26 million reworking Khalil Mack's and Eddie Jackson's deals and releasing Bobby Massie and Buster Skrine, along with the re-signing of Cairo Santos, Germain Ifedi and Patrick O'Donnell, plus the signing of Andy Dalton - it didn't make sense.
They didn't appear to be close to where they needed without releasing Kyle Fuller.
Fuller had the highest cap hit on the team, including $9 million in dead money, so they will save approximately $11 million by releasing him.
Several sources are telling me the team asked Fuller to take a substantial pay cut to stay and he wisely declined.
The team's problem is they've gone from potentially the best secondary in football 12 months ago to it being a potentially serious weak spot.
In Eddie Jackson they have a 2018 All-Pro safety who has been invisible - and a problem when he wasn't - over the last season and a half. The team also has no starter next to him, a promising rookie corner in Jaylon Jonson who's had multiple shoulder injuries and missed the last quarter of last season, and apparently a pair of Day 3 draft picks in Kindle Vildor and Duke Shelley. Both are complete unknowns at this point to plug into Fuller's and Skrine's spots.
Sure, it could work out, but it also has all the makings of a train wreck.
Fuller isn't a $20 million a year player but his cap hit was that high because the Bears had already massaged his deal a few times after re-signing him three years ago.
His base salary at about $11 million was a bargain.
It has been a really difficult week for Bears fans, especially considering this came on the heels of the news the Bears had given Dalton $10 million and told him he was the starter, all while Mitch Trubisky - a better player over the last four seasons than Dalton - was signing in Buffalo for $2.5 million to back up Josh Allen.
There is no right or wrong in matters like these until they are given a chance to play out, but there are basic facts, questions of motivation for the moves and the need to own them a year or two from now. For now at least, this all looks really bad for Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy.
If this is what they're doing to try and save their jobs - if in fact those jobs are in jeopardy - Lord help them.
When Pace and Nagy have talked about being not that far away and believing they saw a path to contention it was believable if they could re-create their 2018 defense, build a dominant running game behind an upgraded offensive line and find a quarterback who could avoid losing and manage wins.
A franchise quarterback would be better, but we've known from the jump they didn't have the assets to make that happen.
Now they've given the QB job to a guy who will manage some wins but create some losses. They so far appear ready to bring back the same failed offensive line, and weakened the defense to a point where a 2018 revival appears out of the question.
Yes, it's early in free agency and the draft still looms, but this is an awful start.
It's getting harder for Bears fans to find hope anywhere.
• Twitter: @Hub_Arkush