Why the Bears might find it difficult adding a viable edge rusher

With only about $14.7 million in cap space according to Overthecap.com, only five teams have less cap space available than the Bears. They need some of the $14.7 million during the year for operating expenses, like signing someone in case of injuries.

All of this chases away available talent because if discarded veterans can extend their careers and get more cash elsewhere, that's where you go. When players are actually cut, it's not a case of going to a team they think they can win with as much as it is getting the cash. They need a job.

Only the very select few are in a situation where they've made enough money and want to sign with a perceived Super Bowl contender just to try to get a ring at the end of their career.

This year the Bears are in a place where it will be tougher to even sign those better players who get cut by other teams and it's not because of unwise cap management or because they won't be a Super Bowl contender.

The problem is the glut of cash out there among other teams, and they'll be better situated to gobble up the better available talent.

There are 19 teams with at least $20 million in available cap space still, and 11 of those with at least $30 million. New England still has $60 million.

Not all of those teams have a pending huge contract extension due to devote a big chunk of their cash towards, either.

What is happening is teams have more cap space than they know what to do with at this point.

The cap was $208.2 million when teams came out of the pandemic in 2022, up $26 million from the 2021 pandemic-striken cap. It went up by $16.6 million more in 2023 and by $30.6 more million in 2024. The 2025 cap is $24 million more than last year. All told, it's about $100 million higher than in the second pandemic year.

On the other side of the ledger so to speak, in 2022 there were two teams left with at least $10 million when the league year ended, one with more than $11.1 million according to Spotrac.com. In 2023 it jumped to seven with at least $10 million left at the end of the league year. When the 2024 league year ended, it had doubled to 14 teams with at least $10 million left, and seven with at least $20 million left.

The cap keeps going up at a rate greatly exceeding expenditures. Team spending doesn't or can't keep pace.

As a result, you have so many cash-rich teams waiting to pick up better cut players or the few remaining unsigned free agents who are worth adding.

It looks like a situation where a team like the Bears would have been better off getting the extra edge rusher now, if possible at all.

It's only going to turn into a feeding frenzy later when more teams with bigger wallets start battling to pick up the few players worth signing because they've all got the cash to burn. And the Bears are not one of those teams.

Younger players like Austin Booker, Dominique Robinson and Roschon Johnson need to make that next step now more than ever.

Either that, or Poles needs to put his trading cap on and get out into the marketplace for edge rush help like he did last year, and that didn't exactly work out the way they hoped with Darrell Taylor.