The Chicago Bears managed to thread the needle between the start of training camp and the end of the preseason without any significant injuries. Well, for the most part. Unfortunately, their ageless long snapper Patrick Scales wasn’t able to maintain his uncanny stretch of games without missing time. A back injury sidelined him this past month and it’s gotten bad enough to where he will require surgery. This forced GM Ryan Poles to quickly pivot, trying to find help on short notice. The Bears decided to go with veteran Scott Daly.
On the surface, the move makes sense. Daly has snapping experience across the NFL, XFL, and AAF. Most recently, he was the snapper for the Detroit Lions from 2021 through 2023. What makes the move so on-brand for the organization isn’t his track record. It is where he was born.
Daly is a native of Downers Grove, just 40 minutes outside of downtown Chicago.
Daly finally gets his revenge on Patrick Scales, too.
The Bears have built a reputation since Poles took over by targeting players who have local roots. Jack Sanborn, T.J. Edwards, Lucas Patrick, Kiran Amegadjie, and Doug Kramer are all examples of this. Poles holds the belief that players always seem to bring a little extra to the field when they’re playing in front of their hometown fans. He’s not wrong. Edwards was phenomenal last year. Sanborn has been a terrific find as an undrafted free agent. No doubt he thinks Daly will want to put his best foot forward, knowing his friends and family will be in close proximity this season. It also allows him to fulfill a measure of revenge on Patrick Scales. Daly signed with Chicago as an undrafted free agent in 2017. Unfortunately, Scale was already established as the starter by that point. It is crazy to think he’d return seven years later to fulfill his original dream.
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It’s called “accountability”. We want those guys from Bolingbrook and Schaumberg who will show up for their families on Sunday, as opposed to an outside guy like Davis who can’t be bothered to do something extra.
Yup, we would not want Kramer to fall over forward because of that extra weight or have the ball brush against his oversized package when long-snapping the ball. That’s physics too. I stand corrected then.
In the meantime, the Vikings cut Jaren Hall to sign Brett Rypien. Kind of an odd decision since Hall led all QBs in the preseason with a 133 appx QBR…
@dshea Normally, I would be a provocateur having fun to see if I could earn more negatives than my heroes, TGena and TWTY. But upon reflection, if I had had a big fat son with very little skill or natural ability even as a center in football, then I would have prepared him to find other things on the football field to learn such as long-snapping or had him play ice hockey or rugby as an additional sport. Instead, he lucked out to sign with the very center-deficient Bears and kept because he was a “local”. That is not how… Read more »
Once again, I think Doc has a valid point. Why don’t college centers develop that skill so that they can bring that to the table and save another spot on the roster? The Bears are using their punter to hold for Santos. Makes a lot of sense. It does seem though that the long-snappers are usually way lighter than typical Centers.