James Daniels put together an impressive first year for the Steelers while the Bears' o-line was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In Ryan Poles' first offseason as Chicago Bears general manager, he had a difficult decision to make regarding fourth-year guard James Daniels. The former center from Iowa State was selected by the Bears with the 39th pick of the 2018 NFL Daft. At the time, he was a young prospect (barely 21 when drafted) and regarded as the best pulling center in the draft that year. He was an agile, athletic lineman who, in theory, would fit the profile of offensive linemen that Poles is trying to bolster the Bears roster with.
RAS is a fairly new metric that stands for "Relative Athletic Score". It is a tool used to compare a player's prospective talent against his peers based solely on athleticism. Daniels had a ridiculously high RAS coming out of college and has flashed that athleticism numerous times during his five-year NFL career.
Then on Wednesday, this nugget trickled out from a Steelers beat writer:
So it begs the question: what's the deal? Why didn't the Bears re-sign Daniels when he was young (only 25 this year), athletic, and fit the scheme Chicago was going to run that relied on its linemen working in space?
Maybe it was because – statistically speaking – Daniels had his worst year as a pro in 2021. Per PFF, he surrendered 40 pressures and committed nine penalties. This followed a 2020 campaign that was cut short by injuries, so it's possible the new front office thought Daniels' best days were behind him. That assumption backfired, though, as Daniels went on to cut his allowed pressures in half (20) this season and committed only five penalties for the Steelers.
A Layered Predicament
In hindsight, it's tough to understand the logic behind not re-signing James Daniels. However, one could argue that his exit opened the door for Teven Jenkins to slide into right guard and put together a very impressive season before a neck injury sidelined him later in the year.
Whether or not Ryan Poles (and assistant GM Ian Cunningham) pegged Jenkins as a guard prior to Daniels' departure is unknown (and unlikely considering the tumultuous offseason Jenkins endured last year). But if they had seen him as more of an interior lineman, then it makes moving on from Daniels sting a bit less. Jenkins' excelling at guard was likely more, as Bob Ross so famously said, a happy little accident than a bout of clairvoyance from the new GM.
Reports as early as training camp still had Jenkins running as the second-team tackle.
Cody Whitehair, the current longest-tenured Bear, was never going to be released last offseason due to the structure of his contract. The first year the Bears could realistically move on from him and save money is this upcoming offseason when they could save close to close to $10 million by releasing the guard and designating it a post-June 1 move (full disclosure, I don't think they should).
One option would have been sliding Daniels back to the spot he manned in college: center. But the Bears tried that in 2019 and it lasted less than half a season as Daniels simply wasn't equipped to play one of the most important positions on the line.
Last offseason, the Bears opted to sign Lucas Patrick, who fizzled out in his one season in Chicago as he couldn't overcome a string of injuries dating back to training camp. The team also tred to acquire Ryan Bates and signed him to an offer sheet (and Bates had an underwhelming year for a Bills team whose entire offensive line took a step backward in 2022).
Overall
It's never a great look when a player the team drafted doesn't get re-signed and goes on to thrive elsewhere. We can hem and haw all we want and try to find a definitive reason as to why James Daniels wasn't re-signed, but in all likelihood, this was simply a whiff by the then recently-hired new front office.
Here's to hoping it's not an omen of things to come. The Chicago Bears have arguably the most pivotal offseason in franchise history peeking just around the corner, and Poles has all of the tools needed to either mold this franchise into a perennial contender or go down the also-ran path of so many GMs before him.
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