Phil Thompson at the Chicago Tribune on the Bears conservative approach to free agency:

[GM Ryan] Poles is taking the long view, not serving a short-term bid for a Super Bowl run that might not materialize next season. And then a season or two later, you’re in salary-cap hell with a roster of aging or injury-riddled stars.

The champion Seattle Seahawks were a model of building steadily but fairly quickly, with hardly a household name among their number.

Poles acknowledged he has to consider: “What’s going to help this football team now? But also being conscious of what’s going to happen down the road.”

“We want to sustain success,” he continued. “We talk about that a lot. In order to do that, we have to be very calculated with the moves we make. We felt like sticking with our plan going into free agency, that was the best thing for us.”

For years, Bears fans clamored for the team to be big players in free agency. And I’d say over the last 10 years that they have been with some big signings and big trades. And look where it’s got them. Not very far. Lots of big swings. Some hits. A lot of misses. I’m looking at you, Chase Claypool.

These largely expensive moves that have drained their resources have generally gotten them nowhere for very long.

Good franchises that are competitive year after year in the long term generally don’t operate that way. I look at teams like the Steelers, for instance, and I don’t see them out there chasing expensive free agents. These are draft and develop organizations that are very strategic in their free agent signings.

The Bears had that in the Jerry Angelo – Lovie Smith days of the franchise, and though they weren’t competing for a Super Bowl every year, they competed within the division more often than not.

Now the Bears appear to me to be set up better than they were in the Angelo days because they appear to me to have a better coaching staff with an offensive head coach that can compare favorably with anyone in the league.

The Bears are truly set up for sustained success. Now is not the time to go all in. The Bears need to be about value now.

It’s the time to get the best deal you can for under-the-radar talent and to let the organization make that talent worth more than what you paid for. That’s what good organizations do, and that’s what the team has to become.