Hooray! Six of the seven Chicago Bears draft picks signed their rookie contracts ahead of the team’s weekend rookie minicamp, with first-round pick Roquan Smith being the notable exception.
Not that there is much of a concern here regarding Smith not signing on the dotted line. If you’ll recall, Mitch Trubisky didn’t sign his rookie deal until right before training camp started in July and still participated in all of the team’s offseason activities. Parsing through contract language and offsets kept Trubisky from signing his deal immediately, and I expect that happens to be the hold-up here with Smith.
Despite the lack of a signed contract, there was never a threat of Trubisky holding out. In fact, Trubisky declared that his not having a contract wasn’t going to interfere with offseason training activities and continued to express his intent to practice without a deal. We’ll see if Smith follows the same path.
Jason Belzer of Forbes projects Smith’s deal will be for four years, $18,596,442 and have $11,695,107 guaranteed. While Spotrac estimates Smith’s deal to be worth $18,640,768 with $11,636,922 and a $3,389,231 cap hit. Either way, his deal will fall in line with the rest of the top-10 picks.
As for the Bears players who did sign, they each received four-year deals on the NFL’s rookie scale. Here is a look at the deals that got done, per Spotrac:
Guard James Daniels (2nd round)
Wide receiver Anthony Miller (2nd round)
Linebacker Joel Iyiegbuniwe (4th round)
Defensive lineman Bilal Nichols (5th round)
Edge defender Kylie Fitts (6th round)
Wide receiver Javon Wims (7th round)