What about Eddie Royal?

A large part of the decision comes down to Sanzenbacher’s future, Johnny Knox’s future, and Emery’s plan of attack during the draft. The most pivotal of the three is Johnny Knox. He’ll be wearing a back brace for another month, and the time for recovery may take many more months, let alone him being able to run routes at full speed, extending to catch passes, and absorbing blows. 2012 will be the last year of his contract.

This is where Royal comes in. As you said, he played great with Cutler his rookie year, and still has plenty of potential. His value as a return man makes him an ideal replacement to Knox. If he doesn’t slip on routes, he may even be an upgrade.

Sign Royal, and keep Knox in the back of the roster. Let Knox make a full recovery, and the chance presents itself, give him some snaps next year. In a worst case scenario, his contract will be up at the end of the year. It’s not even that big anyways.

Eddie Royal’s salary last year had a cap hit of 942.5K. Even with a modest raise, his price shouldn’t exceed 1 million by much. If needed, the Bears can backload his deal in order to keep Knox on the roster this year and maintain financial flexibility. Make several cuts, and Royal could basically come for free. Most importantly, all of this still leaves more than enough room to add another wide receiver and address other positions too.

Even if he doesn’t get back to to where he was as a rookie he can still be a good replacement for Johnny in the return game while being an upgrade over Sanz and REW at the WR position.

in Bennett and Hester. Don’t like the idea as much as some others here. I don’t believe there will be enough room on the roster for a guy like Royal.

Big targets for Cutler are what’s most important. We need jump ball guys.

The guy has been falling since August.

it’s time to think outside the box, like we did to get Cutler. You have Cutler, you need a WR who can complement his skills. Our SB window (if it still exists) is quite narrow. the future is now.

I think they go small with the hopes of hitting big

Is JA back on board and I was not informed?

I think he’s a wise choice. He’d likely come cheaper than Manningham. He and Garcon are both streaky, physically gifted #3s with the potential to be #2s. What he has on Garcon is above avg kick return ability, less alarming injury history, a higher ceiling, and (most significantly) established chemistry with Cutty. I live in Denver, and the feeling here is that he’s headed to greener pastures. Hopefully that means Bourbonnais and Soldier Field.

And upgrade our # 3 spot. Obviously we’d still need a # 1.

As long as the Bears add a larger complimentary player into the receiving corps as well.

with a GM who can take a weakness and make it a strength in one off-season. You can’t do it every year, and you can’t do it all the time, but this year seems to have an opportunity.

1 of these: Colston, Bowe, V. Jackson or R. Wayne
1 of these: Blackmon (trade up obviously), Floyd, Jeffery, Sanu, Quick
and Eddie Royal.

With Knox potentially missing 2012, this lets you build a solid wide receiver group over one off-season. Bennett and Royal will at least be familiar to Cutler, and he can probably grow to love the two bigger targets rather quickly. I know, its a lot to ask for, but when was the last time Chicago had that kind of fire power?

His ProFootballFocus rating is one of the worst for FA WR’s at -10. Only Legedo Naanee, Jerome Simpson and Andre Caldwell have worse ratings.

He played with Cutler on the Santa Claus Junior Mints of the Indianapolis Pop Warner League when they were 11. He’s bagging groceries now, but they had great chemistry together, even perfectly executed a flapjack pass that won their rival game against the Fuida Goat Wranglers that year.

I don’t think he’s a game-changer, but I have to believe with a fresh start and a QB who can get him the ball he could be a solid #4, ok #3 (with some upside). His numbers were solid with Cutler as a rookie and as long as he’s not the #1 WR like he has been he might have some value.

Of course this depends a lot on what kind of contract/salary cap hit he would cost. But with Bennett/Hester/Sanzenbacher as our WRs as of now (and maybe Knox) we need at least two bodies, hopefully one being a #1 WR. I wouldn’t mind getting one of the #1 FAs, drafting a guy in the 2nd-4th in the draft and getting Royal.

Something like: Colston(FA)/Bennett/McNutt(Draft)/Royal/Sanzenbacher as an example looks a lot better to me than anything we’ve had in years.

and couldn’t even start for Denver. Good route runner but slow with no separation. Maybe if Knox is done for the year but the best could be a #3 guy and most likely a #4 guy. We have bigger fish to fry like looking for starters at CB, Oline, DE, and WR.