NFC North Notes: Bears, Lions, Packers

Bears

• According to Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune, Cameron Meredith‘s two-year, $9.6 million offer sheet with the Saints can be worth up to $12.6 million by reaching incentives and includes $5.4 million guaranteed.
• Biggs reports that the Ravens also offered Meredith a contract, which gave him some leverage in negotiations.
• The Bears now have until Wednesday to officially match the Saints’ offer sheet to Meredith or allow him to walk without any compensation.
• Chicago could have used a second-round tender on Meredith, which would have cost them $2.914 million, but would haven’t also ensured that they would have kept him at a lower salary, as it’s unlikely a team was going to surrender a second-round pick to sign him.
• Biggs points out that the two factors in play for the Bears come down to the health of Meredith’s knee and the role he’ll play in Bears’ new offense.

Lions

• The Lions held a private workout for Vanderbilt DB Tre Herndon last week. (Dave Birkett)
• Lions assistant STs coach Devin Fitzsimmons met with SE Missouri CB Mike Ford. (Dave Birkett)

Packers

Packers HC Mike McCarthy mentioned that they’re going “back to Page 1″ as they attempt to reshape their offensive system for the 2018 season.

“We’ve gone back to Page 1,” McCarthy said, via PackerNews.com.

According to McCarthy, everything was open to change down to the minute details of the team’s offense operates.

“Everything was open for discussion: every definition, every formation,” McCarthy said. “So we’ve taken a scrub-brush approach to the whole system, whether we’re talking about formation, defensive identification, at the line putting the ball in play, all those different areas that you tend to gloss over year to year, particularly when you’re in the same offense for so long.”

This will be a lot of change for the Packers and QB Aaron Rodgers, but McCarthy believes it will be a good thing for Rodgers.

“These will be good changes for him,” McCarthy said. “It’ll probably be a little frustrating for him at first because the volume (of changes) is higher than it’s been, but he’s always up for a challenge.”