Drew Dalman suddenly elected to retire this offseason after just one season as the Bears\u2019 starting center, in only his fifth NFL season. Chicago HC Ben Johnson reflected on Dalman\u2019s decision, saying there was some desire to talk him out of retirement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think selfishly, myself, the organization, Ryan (Poles), his teammates \u2013 we all want him back,\u201d Johnson said, via CHGO<\/a>. \u201cHe made us better last year. The success we had on offense was really started because of him. There\u2019s naturally that selfish desire \u2013 \u2018No, no, no, I want to change his mind.\u2019 But that\u2019s not why we do what we do, also. We have to do what\u2019s right for the team and the organization but it\u2019s also really important that his concerns are taken care of. You could tell pretty quickly that he\u2019s a smart guy. This was not a rash decision. I think out of respect to him, I had pretty good confidence this was the direction that was going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Miami C James Brockermeyer will take a 30 visit with the Bears. (Tom Pelissero<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Packers signed HC Matt LaFleur to a contract extension after there was some chatter about potentially firing him. Green Bay president Ed Policy highly praised LaFleur\u2019s ability as a teacher and has been impressed with his work with their quarterbacks over the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust drawing on the seven years that I\u2019ve known him, drawing on the process that we went through in bringing him here and my conversations with Mark (former Packers president Mark Murphy), when Mark chose to hire him and then over those seven years \u2026 Matt is a teacher. He\u2019s a natural at it. His parents were both teachers,\u201d Policy said, via Matt Schneidman of The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cJust watching him develop players as individuals and then, more importantly, develop those individuals into teams over the last seven years, I\u2019ve been very impressed with him in particular at the quarterback position. You guys were all here when he was getting, I\u2019d say, the very best out of Aaron Rodgers, and he did a tremendous job of developing Jordan (Love) and then look what he did with Malik (Willis) over the past couple of years. That, coupled with the locker room supports him, from Jordan to the rest of the locker room. You guys have probably all had a chance to talk to many of those guys. They support him openly and they support him behind closed doors. I think he\u2019s the winningest \u2014 you guys can correct me if I\u2019m wrong \u2014 in his time in the league as a head coach, I think he\u2019s the winningest NFC coach and I think the third-winningest coach in the NFL in those seven years. Frankly, the fact that I was being asked, is firing him even an option at that point? I was a little bit shocked by that.\u201d<\/p>\n Policy said he decided to re-sign LaFleur before their playoff loss to the Bears.<\/p>\n \u201cI appreciate it and I wouldn\u2019t have it any other way,\u201d Policy said. \u201cI mean, the second half of that Chicago game was very disappointing. We were all extremely frustrated. I know the fans are frustrated, and I wouldn\u2019t want them not to be frustrated. They\u2019re very passionate about our team, about our games and about the outcome of our games. I wouldn\u2019t change that, and I did hear quite a bit of it. I can\u2019t let that factor into these types of decisions. Ultimately, does it impact me? Yes. Do I hear it? Yes. These are not decisions that should necessarily be made by fans after a very disappointing loss.\u201d<\/p>\n Vikings HC Kevin O\u2019Connell fielded several questions at the league owners\u2019 meetings about the re-signing of veteran QB Carson Wentz<\/a>, who started five games for Minnesota before being lost due to a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think it\u2019s about depth,\u201d O\u2019Connell said, via Pro Football Talk<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s about the fact that, without too much of a rearview-mirror-looking backward, you see where the final standings were; where we were at 9-8 and ultimately maybe the one or two or three plays or sequences of games where you find your way into the dance, and that\u2019s really all you ever want at the beginning of every year is to punch your ticket to compete in that one game to continue moving on. We\u2019ve played three guys in one year. We\u2019ve played four in another. We just feel like having the ability to get quality quarterback play throughout the circumstances we do not control throughout the season gives our team pretty historic data that says if we get quarterback play to a certain line, we win a lot of football games. So we wanted to ensure we are able to do that, but also make it a very, very competitive room and that\u2019s regardless of who\u2019s taking reps with what group. We want the quarterback position to elevate our team, and with the talent we have around that position, we feel pretty good about it also working vice versa the other way around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to be patient and allow Carson to see what opportunities might be out there, but at the same time, Carson knew very on early in offseason, regardless what other moves or move we made in that room, that we wanted him back,\u201d O\u2019Connell added. \u201cHe loved being in Minnesota. He loves our fan base. He loves getting to wear the purple and gold. I know for some people it might be a, \u2018Why would Carson do that?\u2019 I think some people are discounting the fact that he\u2019s really enjoyed his time not only being around [quarterbacks coach] Josh [McCown] and his teammates but being a Minnesota Viking. It\u2019s an important thing to me to always know that it\u2019s a place that guys want to come play whether they have previous experience with us, but there\u2019s a desire and an enthusiasm about playing quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Connell was asked if Wentz would compete for the starting job with former Golden Gopher Max Brosmer, struggling third-year QB J.J. McCarthy<\/a>, and incoming former first overall pick Kyler Murray<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing that we feel comfortable and confident about the depth of our quarterback room, we want to prepare all of those guys to be able to take snaps and contribute to winning when called upon,\u201d O\u2019Connell responded. \u201cWhat that looks like, we\u2019ll see. I see a lot of ways that we\u2019ll be able to continue the evolution and evolve our offense here in Year 5, but at the same time, principles I believe Kyler will be able to not only make his own but provide different layers to what we do with some of his experiences, and the same goes for J.J. and Carson and Max (Bromer) as far as guys who now all have experience in our system, and that\u2019s one of the benefits as we\u2019ve seen before of playing multiple guys in a tough year for the quarterback position just from a pure health standpoint, which is what last year, so now we feel really good about the combination, depth, talent and the fact that we\u2019ve got a room that\u2019s going to push each and all of those guys are going to have great offseasons and be ready to rock and roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking for the latest NFL Insider News & Rumors?<\/p>\n Be sure to follow NFL Trade Rumors<\/a> on X.com<\/a>\u00a0and FACEBOOK<\/a>\u00a0for breaking NFL News and Rumors for all 32 teams!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drew Dalman suddenly elected to retire this offseason after just one season as the Bears\u2019 starting center, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[1763,2551,24503,7,1519,63354,4827,3031,3218,233,259,2529,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-854186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-carson-wentz","9":"tag-drew-dalman","10":"tag-ed-policy","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-j-j-mccarthy","13":"tag-james-brockermeyer","14":"tag-kyler-murray","15":"tag-matt-lafleur","16":"tag-max-brosmer","17":"tag-minnesota","18":"tag-minnesota-vikings","19":"tag-minnesotavikings","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116349131046737851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}