The Chicago Bears are quite comfortable with Mitch Trubisky as the team’s QB1 moving forward, but that doesn’t mean the position group doesn’t have other needs.
Mike Glennon is on his way out the door once the new league year begins and Mark Sanchez is a free agent, but is arguably more in the running to return to his role as mentor/hype man/third-string quarterback than anything else. That leaves the Bears in a place where they need a suitable backup for Trubisky for the 2018 season.
Enter Chase Daniel.
Daniel has a prior relationship with new Bears coach Matt Nagy from their time in Kansas City, which as it turns out could be Chicago’s primary competition when it comes to potential landing spots. Indeed, Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports believes the Bears and Chiefs could be battling tooth-and-nail for the backup signal caller.
“Anticipate a bidding war between the Bears and Chiefs over backup quarterback Chase Daniel,” La Canfora writes. “Both teams have a staff with strong ties to him, and while the Saints love Daniel, too, his price might be too steep for them considering what they are about to dole out to Drew Brees.”
The idea of a “bidding war” for a 31-year-old backup quarterback would be far-fetched if not for the fact that the Bears out-bid themselves last offseason for a quarterback who hadn’t started in three years (Michael: Ouch.)
Last season, Daniel signed a one-year deal worth $900,000 plus incentives to backup Brees in New Orleans, and he’s previously spent time with the Philadelphia Eagles. Every free agent wants to be paid, but I’m having trouble grasping Daniel’s market. He has thrown a grand total of three passes since the start of the 2015 season.
In the end, a prohibitive price tag would probably put the Bears out of the Daniel derby, because their pending release of Glennon (which can’t happen until the start of the new league year because of language in his contract) tells us the team doesn’t seem to have an interest in a high-priced backup option. But because of Daniel’s ties to GM Ryan Pace (the two crossed paths in New Orleans from 2010-12) and Nagy, the Bears’ interest can’t be understated.