The Bears Could Create Additional Cap Space By Giving Their Backup QB an Extension

Chase Daniel was brought into the Chicago Bears’ quarterbacks room to teach Mitch Trubisky the ways of Matt Nagy’s offense and guide the developing thrower in the right direction. He did just that and more last season (plus, he even won a game as a starter in a pinch on Thanksgiving). So even though Daniel’s signing was met with some resistance at first, he’s done his part for this team. But more could be on the horizon.

Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune suggests that handing Chase Daniel an extension could help create the additional salary cap room the Bears seek. Perhaps that was on GM Ryan Pace’s mind on Wednesday while meeting the media, when he said “we expect Chase to be a Bear for a long time.”

We explored the idea of cutting Daniel to save cap space in our extensive cap-space creation exercise last week, but an extension provides a more feasible alternative – and one that doesn’t result in the Bears hitting the market in search for a backup signal-caller, in addition to their other needs.

Daniel is set to earn $6 million in the final year of the two-year contract he signed last March. And while he doesn’t seem like a candidate for a pay cut, there are other ways to satisfy both sides. For example, the Bears could convert some of Daniel’s $4 million in base salary into a bonus. From there, tacking on an additional year or two to the back-end of his current deal would allow for the backup to receive monetary kick-backs and at least another year of job security.

I wish it was as easy as applying Kyle Long’s restructured deal to Daniel and going from there, but it isn’t. Because while Long can make his money back by hitting bonuses and incentives tied to playing time, it’s not likely those opportunities would be available for Daniel. And if they were, it would have meant something went terribly wrong with QB1 and I don’t even want to entertain those thoughts at this time.

Pace said internal conversations regarding ways to create cap space have been taking place at Halas Hall, which is good because the Bears need as much breathing space under the cap as they can get. According to OverTheCap.com, the Bears have $15,466,141 in available cap space. It’s a better situation than where they were to start the month, but things could always improve – even if it’s by a small margin by way of an extension for a backup quarterback.

(Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images)

written by

Luis C. Medina, who you can find on Twitter at lcm1986, has been covering the Chicago Bears at Bleacher Nation since 2017. Since then, he has written about 3 head coaches, 5 play-callers, and 11 starting quarterbacks. Previously, Luis wrote about the Cubs and MLB at BN (2015-16) and worked in the Chicago Tribune sports department (2011-16). He also co-hosted a Cubs postgame show, Outside the Ivy, in 2019.

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