Hard to argue with that. The model of building a team via free agency and trades just does not work. It's an expensive and temporary fix and frankly, mortgages your future. Free agents are expensive. Trades usually cost you picks, which is the vicious cycle because it impacts your ability to build for the future.
If we look at the teams that are always in the conversation, its about being able to draft well, spot that unique talent and work with it. For example, Brady as a late round pick. Wilson as a 3rd that no one expected to be this good or even Rodgers sitting on a bench for a couple of years behind a first ballot Hall of Famer.
The Bears have a lot of ills caused by a lot of things. You can argue about the quality of coaching, but the reality that there's been such a change of coaching - not because guys are getting hired for HC jobs ala the Belicheck Tree - but because of a lack of performance, is crippling. Turning over an OC every week and a half will not mean success for any team. Couple that will 5-6 years of poor drafts and you see what you see in the Bears.
Then we perfectly understand each other...
The problem with this team recently has been destroying our draft stock by taking on half assed "mercenary" free agent type players at the end of their careers... Jay Ratliff has lived up but so far none of the older FA signings have done anything in recent years but eat salary cap space, tarnish our draft stock (which prevents us from getting these stars in their prime) and degrades the developmental and evaluation stages that we are supposed to give to young players...
You are supposed to get FA stars or starters to compliment your already established star players... You aren't supposed to bring the FA in and expect them to be the star player...
We don't have a single quality defensive end from our own draft picks on the roster lol... That's fucking pathetic and insane! Houston Young Allen Bass all drafted by other teams... We don't have a single quality drafted offensive line or WR from the Angelo era...
We can rally behind the guys like Briggs and Tillman because we love "our guys" but to expect them to play like its their primes or close to it like they did in 2006 and carry us when our team literally has zero other star players in their prime is absolutely the thing that would make us delusional... Which many fans are...
I'm desperate for a championship run as much as anyone on this board but depending on free agents and old players past their primes is rarely the recipe for success...
Look at the Ravens... Old Ray Lewis and Ed Reed! But young Joe Flacco played a perfect offseason surrounded by young hungry talent like rice and smith who were complimented by free agents... Ray Lewis was old and past his prime but was the brain of a defense that consisted of Smith Webb Suggs Ngata Krueger Pollard and Reed
We had our Ray Lewis in Brian Urlacher, we had our Ed Reed in Tillman as far as creating turnovers and shutting it down defensively...
What we didn't have was a Ngata Suggs Pollard Krueger...
In the end what you see comes from a history of poor drafting
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