The hearts of Chicago Bears national stopped for a split second when news dropped that the Green Bay Packers extended an offer sheet to cornerback Kyle Fuller. Immediately there was speculation that GM Ryan Pace had made a mistake. He risked losing the teams’ best corner in 2017 but placing the transition tag on him and now he was going to their most hated rival.
Except there’s no way Pace or anybody with halfway common sense when it comes to football business didn’t see something like this happening. Fuller is a 26-year old corner coming off a Pro Bowl-caliber year (two INTs, 22 passes defended). Other teams were bound to be interested and would likely test to see if the Bears were serious about keeping him.
This is true. The #Bears have planned to match any offer and keep Fuller. The structure will be interesting. https://t.co/MPF4z1n3Wc
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 16, 2018
It turns out the Packers weren’t even the first offer Fuller got. Just the first one he liked and chose to accept. Now it falls to the Bears to decide whether they want to match. All indications are they will. The question is why did they go through this process with the transition tag? Why not franchise tag him and be done with it? There are a few reasons.
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It accelerates Kyle Fuller long-term deal and also was a gamble on price
There were two potential benefits to this move. If the Bears had franchise tagged Fuller, it would’ve paid him $15 million for the 2018 season. However, there’s a strong chance he could’ve just played out the season that way and become a free agent again next year. By transition tagging him, the Bears allowed another team to set up the parameters of a long-term deal that Fuller will be open to signing now.
The other goal behind the move was a simple attempt to gain a discount. Pace didn’t want to pay Fuller $15 million a year. He was willing to bank on the likelihood that no other team was willing to do the same. Bill Barwell of ESPN claims this tactic is nothing new and is about how well a team can read the market on a player.
The Patriots do this all the time. The idea that the Bears want Fuller to seek out a long-term deal on someone else’s terms so they can match as opposed to their own is naive. The Bears transitioned Fuller because they thought they could get away with saving $2 million.
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) March 16, 2018
So the question now isn’t whether the Bears will match the offer. It’s whether they’ll get any sort of discount to keep Fuller. The Packers reportedly have somewhere around $22-23 million in salary cap space. So it seems rather shocking they’d pay Fuller $15 million a year or more. Especially with Aaron Rodgers’ anticipated pay raise right around the corner.
Odds are the deal is higher than the $13 million Fuller would’ve gotten this year on the transition tag with a setup of guarantees he liked. Now it’s a matter of the Bears seeing whether or not they saved some money. There was nothing surprising about this. It’s just the business of the NFL.
