Free Agency Decisions: Should Bears Reward Germain Ifedi's Unselfishness?
The Bears need to decide whether one of offensive line coach Juan Castillo's great success stories needs to continue.
Like with any other decision in free agency, cash will determine whether Germain Ifedi returns as their right tackle after playing the position over the season's final six games or whether it's Bobby Massie.
For three straight years, Ifedi led the Seattle Seahawks in penalties with a ridiculously high total of 43. However, those came at tackle. With the Bears in 2020, Ifedi committed a career-low four penalties in 16 starts, the first 10 games at the right guard spot where they intended to start him all along.
Ifedi was no worse at right tackle in terms of penalties than he was at right guard. He had two penalties at each position, and coach Matt Nagy credited this to the work with Castillo on fundamentals—in particular for Ifedi, simply staying square with the pass rusher.
"So to me, regardless of his past and what happened in Seattle, I know that Juan Castillo really works a lot of fundamentals with these guys," Nagy said. "The one good thing and one strength that Juan has is with the repetition of fundamentals over and over and over, he gets these guys to really believe in what they're doing, and that's a strength of Juan's and it works out for these guys, these players."
The difficult free agency decision for the Bears is whether they want to go on with him at the position. Do they trust him enough there to make him a long-term offer or to keep Massie, who missed the final eight games with a knee injury in 2020 and final six games in 2019 with an ankle injury.
Taking on the right tackle position without hesitation after he struggled their in the past can't hurt Ifedi's status in the eyes of Nagy and GM Ryan Pace.
"That's the selfless part, is that he never at one point said, at one point in time said, 'Uh, you know, I've done that at tackle, I just want to play guard, how you gonna switch me back out at tackle?,' Nagy said late in the season. "Never did that. He embraced it from the start and it's benefiting us right now."
Massie offers a potential salary cap cut savings for the Bears this year of $8 million if they cut him after June 1 and $5.4 million prior to June 1, according to Overthecap.com. Ifedi played for only $887,500 last season and needs a new deal.
It's not that Massie underperformed and needs to be replaced.
To the contrary, he was enjoying one of the better seasons by current Bears offensive lineman prior to his injury, according to the website Pro Football Focus.
PFF graded his film at a 72.6 level overall, highest overall he's been at since he came to Chicago in 2016. He has been a steady performer throughout.
The same website had Ifedi at 65.0, but he was scoring close to or at Massie's level playing guard before being moved out to right tackle. Then his grade dipped.
Ifedi did allow one of the most disastrous plays of the season while manning right tackle, the strip-sack of Mitchell Trubisky inside the 10-yard line that led to Detroit's shocking 34-30 comeback win at Soldier Field
So the decision the Bears must make is largely one of cash, whether to spend it on a new Ifedi deal with the ideao he's going to keep improving at tackle going forward or to keep Massie at $7.9 million in cap space this year.
A third option in all of this is a potential right tackle in the draft, but this is more of a longer-term approach and one they wouldn't make until the end of April after free agency has wound down.
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