Bears Need to Throw Around More Cash

Spending needs to continue for the Bears with the minimum cap level yet to be reached but they have plenty of ways to pay it out.

Spending money is rarely a problem for anyone.

For the Bears, there has been concern expressed during recent weeks over their inability to spend enough.

The NFL has a minimum a team must spend, 89% of the cap space over a given four-year period, and the Bears still had spending to do to hit this level.

Pro Football Focus salary cap analyst Brad Spielberger has written and commented about this at times during the offseason. He brought up the totals, but regardless, the Bears will have no trouble reaching the necessary amount.

They'll no doubt be adding some free agents yet before the start of training camp. Last year they managed to spend $12.6 million in cap space on Riley Reiff, Michael Schofield, N'Keal Harry, Dante Pettis and Nathan Peterman all after the draft. And they didn't have much cap space. Imagine what they can do now when they have more space.

The other reason is their high number of players entering contract years. They can always extend players' contracts to reach the needed total.

Like last season they entered this league year with 22 players slated to become free agents at season's end. Except this year nine are starters and another player who was a starter but figures as a backup. Also, kicker Cairo Santos is in a contract year.

Starters who would need extensions are Jaylon Johnson, Justin Jones, Cole Kmet, Darnell Mooney, Chase Claypool, Andrew Billings, Kindle Vildor, Darnell Mooney and Trevis Gipson, in addition to Santos.

Gipson might not be a starter this year. It's up for grabs, but he definitely is in the running until or if they come up with a better edge rusher than those brought in so far—Rasheem Green and DeMarcus Walker.

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Billings signed a one-year contract and currently ranks as starting nose tackle. So his Bears career starts out as a contract year.

With so many contract years, it shouldn't be hard to find some to fill out the required spending.

According to Overthecap.com, the Bears are at $30,536,976 in effective cap space at the moment, the most in the league.

Signing cornerbacks and receivers to extensions can be expensive propositions, anyway, and this is another reason it's easy to see them reaching the required level.

They have draft picks to sign, too.

The only real issue would be if they deem a big chunk of those free agents needing extensions as players they don't want back.

It can happen.

They went into last season knowing they had 22 free agents to sign and the only free agents retained from their list are Equanimeous St. Brown and Nathan Peterman.

David Montgomery, Roquan Smith, Riley Reiff, Matthew Adams, Nick Morrow, Armon Watts and Al-Quadin Muhammad were all starters going into the year and none are back.

The real problem may come down the line. Next year they currently will still be third in most cap space available at $104.24 million, and shouldn't have as many players to pay because they're trying fill as many starting spots with cheaper draft picks on their first contracts.

The extended contracts they have coming up could take care of a big chunk of the $104.24 million.

Their solution in future years could also be the huge quarterback contract they'll be paying Justin Fields, provided he succeeds at earning it this year.

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