Clay Harbor shares his wish list for Bears in free agency
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What is Clay Harbor's background and connection to the Bears?
Clay Harbor, former NFL player. Clay Harbor slot to the left. Here's Vick's pass. And it's caught. Touchdown by Harbor. That's a touchdown. Clay Harbor makes that catch. And they've got Harbor for the touchdown. Football analyst for Chicago Sports Network.
I think the Bears have two really good tight ends. I've been in tight end rooms, meeting rooms, practice fields, game field. These two guys, three guys, you can even throw Dermot Smythe in there, but Colton Loveland and Colt Kmet are extremely tough and physical players.
These are guys that can do everything. Clay Harbor with Rahimi Harrison-Grody on 104.3 The Score.
Dreams and nightmares.
What are the Bears' positional needs heading into free agency?
That's Clay Harbor's theme. Also the Philadelphia Eagles, which he was one. So, you know, that's how it works around here. This is Rahimi Harrison Brody on 104.3 The Score. Talking to little bears, kind of wrapping up the Super Bowl, wrapping up the NFL season. And I know we talked about this, your free agency targets. But before we get to that, we were talking about the cap casualties too. Kevin Fishbane had a really in-depth article in The Athletic yesterday We were talking about the decision-making process, and Marshall brought it up. So if you're Ryan Poles, how do you face Dennis Allen? And how does Dennis Allen try to champion for his guys? What goes on in that type of discussion where you're having to make so many decisions about guys who are free agents, guys who might have a really favorable cap hit for a team like a Tremaine Edmonds, for example?
Yeah, you go to your coaches and you say, how valuable is this player to you? Is this a guy you need? Do you think you can find a replacement at a lower price? Because we've got to do some restructuring. One thing that I will say is the restructure potential, which is the 2006 cap savings through simple restructures, which is basically turning salary into a bonus. So what can you do with contracts based on just turning them into a bonus? And the Bears are very high. They're the seventh team listed. $85 million that they can turn into salary cap via just changing that into bonus. That's without changing years on the contract. So sometimes you'll hear guys say it's more cash than cap. So if McCaskey... George McCaskey is okay with paying more.
Some rosters cost more than other rosters, even though you have to be under the salary cap, because the bonuses don't count towards a cap. So if George McCaskey is okay with it, they have a lot of money they can turn into bonuses. And also something I want to say is, the combine coming up in less than two weeks... That's when you find everything out. As a player, as an agent, your agent will go in, they'll have meetings with every team, and they'll go, okay, we like this guy. We like this guy. As a player, that's the first time you'll find out when you're a free agent, does your team want you back? Does this team want you? Does this team want you? Does this team want you? That's when all the trade conversation happens.
That's when all the free agent conversation happens. That's when, as a player, you find out, okay, there's going to be a big market. You find out, okay, there's only two or three teams interested in me. Unfortunately for me, that was typically the case. You got three teams. For a lot of my other buddies, they'd be talking to me like, yeah, this team, this team, this team. I'm like, dang, man, you got 10? I got three.
How does the salary cap impact the Bears' free agency decisions?
But all you need is three. You need three good ones that really want you and you can get a decent deal. It's just like house hunters.
Why am I picturing you collecting valentines like in elementary school and kids, you're looking over at a desk and some kid's got 12 valentines on his desk and you've got four. And you're like, why doesn't anyone want me to be their valentine?
I would say that Clay probably gets more Valentines now than NFL team interest. I'm just going to throw that out there.
Burn. Yeah, that's true.
We've been playing this buzzer the whole day, and it's just living rent-free in our heads.
I love that buzzer.
It's very TikTok-coded.
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