I’m no salary cap expert for sure, but my understanding is they really have no cap room this year to do much else. I know they didn’t have to eat all the dead money this year if they didn’t want to but it seems like a necessary move. I am genuinely curious if you think wiping the slate clean and gaining cap flexibility was a bad move? If it was needed then there really wasn’t much room to do anything else. Of course they could have drafted players to help the offense earlier but I don’t think that would have made a big difference in how this offense is viewed.
So, a couple things.
In the NFL if you don't have a reliably top 10-ish QB you are nowhere, period, you have no chance of any meaningful sustained success. Savvy football brain world tries to dance around that because it makes the game kind of dumb and boring on some level, but that is the iron reality.
So the only question that really truly matters for Ryan Poles taking the helm in January 2022 is whether Justin Fields is a quarterback on the path to being that kind of player or whether he isn't. That's decision #1, he must firmly make that call.
If you decide Justin Fields IS that guy, the 2022 season progressing him along a positive developmental path is all that matters for the future of the team. You're not mortgaging the future to win right now, and the eat money now for flexibility later was already baked in, but there was lots of ability to do what it takes to put a halfway competent NFL offense around Fields. The two biggest dollar free agent signings were defensive linemen and the first two draft picks were defensive backs, instead. When you're talking about
the single least resourced offense in modern NFL history, some tweaks at the margin really matter. What you have given Fields throws his career onto the funeral pyre, he has no chance whatsoever, every snap he takes is a total mess no QB could fix, and his progression toward NFL-level play has to happen now or never.
If you decide Justin Fields IS NOT that guy, your offense is a wash for 2022 since you were in no position this offseason to make any long-term moves on the QB front with no 1st and a crappy cap situation. So you take your lumps, fill your offense with cheap lottery tickets on younger players who you can use the season to take a look at, and wait until your real ammunition reloads to address the QB situation, with at least some serious bullets to play with in that regard with a top 3 pick and a wide open cap sheet.
So yeah, it's obvious that Poles did the correct and responsible thing and made a firm judgment on Justin Fields when he took the job, and set the organization on the course to move forward with that outcome. He followed option 2 to the letter, Fields is not our guy, take your lumps for a year, throw a bit of spaghetti at the wall and look to the future.
To answer your actual question (lol sorry) I don't have strong feelings on that choice either way to be honest. I was always a Fields skeptic and minus the QB position they could get the rest of the roster in relatively decent shape within a year doing things this way. I can understand why this choice was appealing. My complaint is that every Bears staff member and every Chicago media member is lying to me about what the choice was. It's something darker and more cynical than just "coachspeak".
There's also real risk that this just gets so bad and ugly over the next few months, plus the rotten state of the existing roster and perhaps those lottery tickets don't pan out at the hoped-for rate, it could go to a Jaguars-y place where an offseason can't re-jolt things in the right direction. Clearly the mission Eberflus (and Getsy particularly) has been given is to have a team that's smiling, trying hard, and keeping things respectable. We'll see, this offense being helpless in a way that the NFL is not accustomed to seeing will cause a few sparks to fly, I'm sure.