The Bears Den: January 18, 2012

Seems to me, that contribution-wise, the money on Forte would be better spent.

If I’m the GM, I offer Forte a 6 year/$30 Mil deal with $15Mil guaranteed. $6mil sigining bonus included. That way we can spread his money out $5-6mil per year. Forte has to know that he won’t actually get $5Mil in years 4,5,6.

He has already missed more games than Walter did in 13 years.

The Bears have more holes to fill than you can expect to fill in one off season, a franchise tag might be the best thing with Forte it would still leave the Bears enough cap space to make one big F/A signing and to bring in a couple of journeymen F/A’s. That along with a good draft and I can see the Bears making some noise next year.

Little statistical insight….

Forte played 11 games (we won’t be unfair to him and count his final start. he only played a quarter and rushed 5 times for 12 yards. He’s a downhill runner and tends to amass more of his yardage, as do most backs, in the second half when the defense starts to wear down)

First, Forte was NOT 50% of the Bears offense during those 11 games. You’re quoting early season numbers. But he fell off seriously after the first five games of the season. Ignoring the 12th start, because that would seriously lower Forte’s percentage unfairly, in his 11 games, he accounted for 37.7% of the Bears total offense (1475 total yards out of 3910 yards by the team through Week 11)

But here’s where it gets interesting……

Percentage of team offense in games started:
Forte: 37.7
Barber: 57.1
Bell 40.1

Looking at your main criteria, Forte lagged behind both Barber , who was insane in his one start, and Bell, who still outpaced forte in his three starts.

Now, Consider this: the starting running back provided 37.7% of the teams total offense with forte as the starter and 43.8% with Barber and Bell in that role.

I’m sorry, but too much is being placed on what forte accomplished. He’s a good back, but really…..Forte averaged 134 yards per game in his 11 full games….with Jay Cutler on the field and throwing the ball, taking pressure off the running game.

In starters averaged 122 yards per game with defenses focused almost completely on taking the running game away and forcing Caleb Hanie and Josh McCown to throw the ball to win.

My point isn’t that Forte sucks. He clearly doesn’t.

But let’s not pretend that the Bears are shot without Forte or that Barber and Bell were less productive. They weren’t, even though they didn’t have Cutler keeping defenses from stacking he box against them. Let’s be realistic about it.

You could actually create a “winning atmosphere”.

Would promoting him be a wholesale upgrade from JA? Or would it just save the McCaskey’s a few bucks?