Dan (who is an expert in NFL finance based as far as I’m concerned) passed on this article to me from the Chicago Tribune about the Bears.
While the results weren’t what the team intended, the Bears ponied up when it came to constructing the roster during the Marc Trestman era, spending $271,469,560 on players in the 2013 and 2014 seasons combined, according to figures supplied by the NFL Players Association.
The Bears spent $131,522,517 in cash on player payroll in 2014, a tick below the $133 million salary cap.
Cash spending and the salary-cap figures are calculated differently. The Bears spent $139,947,043 in cash on player payroll in 2013. For the last two years, the Bears have spent 106.04 percent of the salary cap, putting them well above the mandated 89 percent minimum for cash spending, which must be achieved over a four-year period.
While we rail here at Fire Everybody about how poorly the Bears have performed on the field and also how poorly player development (especially on offense) has gone over the last 20 or so years, you can’t fault the McCaskey’s for spending dollars. They spend. They threw big contracts at the free agents that were supposed to produce for us, guys like Peppers, Cutty and Marshall, and they paid a lot for coaches and leaders that were supposed to lead us to victory. While we see the player costs here, we aren’t including the $20M or so that the Bears ate on a bunch of coaching contracts when they cleaned house and got rid of everyone after this years’ debacle.
Soldier Field is a dump although an upgrade over the complete mess it was prior to the rebuilding. They don’t have cheerleaders. They want to give up the beloved South Lot, the paradise of binge drinking, for a museum. And we lose, lose and don’t make the playoffs.
But they do spend money every day trying to fix it, and eat money when it isn’t working. We need to give them that.
