The arrival of rookie quarterback Caleb Williams has raised expectations in Chicago, and the expectations are particularly high for head coach Matt Eberflus.
Eberflus is the betting favorite to be named the NFL’s Coach of the Year for the 2024 season. His odds to win the award are +900 at DraftKings.com.
Through two seasons as the Bears’ head coach, Eberflus has a record of just 10-24, but Year Three presents him with a big opportunity to prove that he’s been building a team that is ready for a talented young quarterback to step in and make an immediate impact. If Eberflus guides the Bears to the playoffs in Year Three, the Coach of the Year award could be his.
If Eberflus doesn’t guide the Bears to the playoffs in Year Three, he probably won’t get a Year Four.
Next in the Coach of the Year odds are Jets coach Robert Saleh and Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, both at +1100. Packers coach Matt LaFleur’s odds are +1200 while Falcons coach Raheem Morris and Texans coach Demeco Ryans are both at +1300. Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon and Lions coach Dan Campbell are next at +1500.
The vast majority of the 2024 draft class has signed. The biggest cluster of unsigned picks falls in round one.
Five players aren’t signed. They come from three teams.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams (No. 1) and receiver Rome Odunze (No. 9) are not yet under contract. Ditto for Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy (No. 10) and edge rusher Dallas Turner (No. 17).
Also unsigned is Bengals tackle Amarius Mims, the 18th pick in the draft.
All five will have fully-guaranteed four-year deals, with the dollar value slotted based on selection number. While the 2011 CBA dramatically limited the number of topics for haggling, there are still three main categories.
1. Signing bonus cash flow: How much of the signing bonus is paid up front? How much is deferred, and for how long? Players want the money ASAFP. Teams might try to push some of it out, by a year or longer.
2. Voiding of guarantees: What will it take to let a team wipe out the remaining guarantees? There have been issues in the past about suspensions for certain on-field infractions opening the door to erasing the guaranteed money. Players want to limit the team’s ability to un-guarantee the guaranteed cash. Teams prefer the flexibility to get out from under a bad deal.
3. Guarantee offsets: If the player is released with guaranteed money left, will earnings elsewhere reduce the money owed? The player prefers to double dip. The team wants to get credit for salary from a new NFL franchise.
Frankly, there’s no reason for any of the draft picks to not be signed at this point. All players should insist on getting their deals before setting foot on the practice field for the offseason program. More and more teams are getting their deals done quickly enough to give the players the full and complete four-year protection against a potential freak injury.
The Bears eventually will get a new stadium in the Chicago area. Where that is remains to be seen.
With efforts to build a replacement for Soldier Field on the downtown lakefront stalling, Arlington Heights hopes to get back in the mix.
The biggest impediment has come from property tax issues related to the property purchased by the Bears with the goal of building a new facility. Now, via the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, the Bears have received and responded to a proposed settlement from Arlington Heights as to the outstanding tax issue.
As of last year, the Bears were offering $4.3 million and the town wanted $7.9 million. (Per year, presumably.)
“We’ve worked very hard to come to an agreement with the school districts that I think the Bears can be comfortable with, and that’s been communicated to the Bears, and that’s what we’re discussing now,” Arlington Heights mayor Tom Hayes told the Daily Herald. “So I feel very comfortable that should the Bears re-engage with us and continue to explore the Arlington Park site, that the road is going to be much easier than we found in past months.”
Officially, the Bears say they’re focused on the lakefront option. Team president Kevin Warren, however, has said that the team is not yet ready to put the property in Arlington Heights up for sale.
Thus, as long as the Bears own the site, the Bears could end up building a stadium there.
Bears safety Jonathan Owens will take some time off from training camp to see his wife, gymnast Simone Biles, compete at the Olympics in Paris.
Biles, who made her third U.S. Olympic gymnastics team this weekend, said Owens has been given permission to leave training camp to see her compete.
“The Bears are actually granting him a couple days off from training camp, so he’ll be there, yes,” Biles said, via USA Today. “For just a short little time.”
Owens and Biles hadn’t met when she competed in her first Olympics in 2016, and her second Olympics events were closed to spectators because of the pandemic. So this will be Owens’ first chance to see her on her sport’s biggest stage.
“Any time we can show up for one another in support, we just get super excited because our schedules don’t align that much,” Biles said. “So whenever it does, it’s really important for the both of us to show up in support.”
Quarterback Caleb Williams hasn’t been a member of the Bears for very long, but it has been long enough for tight end Cole Kmet to see steps in the right direction.
Williams joined the Bears as the first overall pick in this year’s draft and he was immediately moved to the top of the depth chart, so the team is set to ride with him one way or another in the 2024. During an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio, Kmet said that he thinks that is a good thing because he has already seen signs of improvement in his rookie teammate.
“He’s really just a normal dude,” Kmet said. “Really good kid. Ultra-competitive and you can see why he’s been so successful thus far in his football career and why he has those types of intangibles to succeed in the NFL. I’m really excited for him. He’s been putting in a lot of work and you can see the progress he was making throughout the OTA period.”
The Bears will be hoping that progress continues throughout the rest of the year and that it is just the start of an upward change in their franchise’s trajectory.
This offseason, the Chargers elected to move on from two veteran receivers in Keenan Allen and Mike Williams.
Fellow receiver Joshua Palmer has been with Los Angeles since 2021 and was close to both Allen and Williams. He said in a recent interview with Eric Smith of the team’s website that it was a clear change for the locker room without the two wideouts.
“Definitely different when you’re used to having your two best friends out there and now they are not,” Palmer said. “But they’re nothing but a phone call away and I’m ready to move forward.”
Palmer added that he “was a little sad” when L.A. moved on from the pair “because they were my good friends and I looked up to Keenan and Mike. From a football standpoint, it’s a business.”
As a 2021 draft pick, Palmer is now one of the older players in Los Angeles’ receivers room along with free-agent signee DJ Chark. Palmer noted he doesn’t necessarily see himself as a leader, though he feels the group is coming together and taking shape.
“We have a lot of different personalities and a lot of different guys,” Palmer said. “Only a couple guys are back from last season so everyone is fairly new and we’re all learning each other.”
Aside from Palmer and Chark, the Chargers will likely rely on last year’s first-round pick Quentin Johnston and rookie second-round pick Ladd McConkey as primary pass-catchers for quarterback Justin Herbert in 2024.
The Bears spent the ninth overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft on wide receiver Rome Odunze primarily for what he can bring to the offense. But he may bring plenty to the special teams as well.
Bears special teams coordinator Richard Hightower referred to Odunze as a four-down player, noting that he barely returned punts in college but managed to pick up a Pac-12 Special-Teams Player of the Week award last season after a spectacular 83-yard touchdown.
“Rome is an every-down player. Rome’s a first-down player, a second-down player, a third-down player and a fourth-down player,” Hightower said. “He had three returns on the books and one of those three returns was a house call.”
Asked if Odunze is the favorite to win the punt returner job in Chicago, Hightower wouldn’t answer but did say he’s a contender for the job.
“I would never discuss that in the open,” he said. “He’s in contention, just like everybody else. Best man will win, cream rises to the top.”
The biggest question for the Bears may be whether they think the potential rewards on special teams are worth the risks of injury. If it’s purely a question of Odunze’s abilities, there’s little doubt that he’s capable of making big plays in the return game.
Bears special teams coordinator Richard Hightower says that with the new kickoff rule expected to increase the number of returns, the kicker is going to have to make more tackles. And that means Hightower is casting a wide net for a potential kickoff specialist.
Although kicker Cairo Santos handled kickoffs last year, Hightower said rookie punter Tory Taylor also could handle kickoffs, and the Bears aren’t ruling out the possibility of someone at another position kicking off, the way the Chiefs have considered letting safety Justin Reid handle kickoffs this season.
“Anybody with a helmet that can kick off,” Hightower said, “is always in play.”
Hightower said all 32 special teams coaches are trying to work out the optimal strategies for their own teams, and look at how to attack opposing teams.
“The rest of the league got to figure it out,” Hightower said.
The new kickoff rule is something everyone in the NFL is trying to figure out right now, and the teams that are ready to hit the ground running in Week One will be at a big advantage.
There’s more than two months until the start of the regular season, but Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons is already thinking about Week One.
Part of Simmons’s impatience to get to the game comes from the fact that he was sidelined for the final weeks of the 2023 campaign and part comes from who will be on the other side of the field. Simmons and the Titans will be in Chicago to face a Bears team that expects to be starting quarterback Caleb Williams in his NFL debut.
During an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, Simmons acknowledged that “all the hype’s gonna be around” the team with the first overall pick in the draft and that he thinks “everybody just counts” the Titans out in games like that. Simmons said that he understands that view, but such circumstances “make me get into a different mode” and he’s looking forward to getting there on September 8.
“I get it,” Simmons said. “You’ve got a first-round pick like Caleb Williams, which is a great player. Watching a couple games when he was at USC and he’s a hell of a player, but it’s a different league and I’m excited to play him the first game.”
Eisen mentioned Caitlin Clark’s transition to the WNBA and how players from other teams have relished a chance to show her how tough life as a pro can be and Simmons said he has a similar mindset when it comes to welcoming Williams to the NFL.
Two years into his NFL career, Bears wide receiver Velus Jones Jr. has done next to nothing on offense, but he has shown some promise as a kickoff returner. And the new kickoff rule could help Jones secure a roster spot this season.
Bears special teams coordinator Richard Hightower said Jones looked very good working with the new kickoff return rule in the offseason, and Hightower hopes Jones establishes himself as a special teams weapon.
“A guy like Velus Jones is a great example,” Hightower said. “A guy like that with the type of skill set, with the speed and power that he has, and he’s coming full speed ahead at you. It’s like a damn freight train running at you and he’s going to get an opportunity to touch the ball three or four more times a game, and we all know he’s a very dynamic player with the ball in his hands. But this new rule, because of the landing zone, because of the league incentivizing returns, it’s only going to have a really good effect for our whole return team but for a guy like that to really change the game.”
The Bears took Jones with a third-round pick in 2022, and he has managed just 11 catchers so far in his NFL career. That’s not what they were hoping for. But as a former SEC Special Teams Player of the Year, Jones has undeniable talent as a return man. The new rule may give new life to his career.