Bears
- Bears assistant GM Ian Cunningham on Georgia DT Jalen Carter: “He’s one of those players that you covet in terms of being one of the better defensive tackles in this draft.” (Kevin Fishbain)
- Cunningham on potentially trading back from the No. 9 pick: “When you’re looking at the board, you’ve gotta have a feel for what those team needs are…you kind of have to weigh where we have guys versus what other teams.” (Courtney Cronin)
- Cunningham on drafting running backs in the top ten: “Yeah, I think it’s worth it.” (Cronin)
- Bears OC Luke Getsy said the team’s main job is protecting QB Justin Fields and surrounding him with talent this offseason: “We got our guy. We just need to help him out. Protect him and get him weapons. And we’re doing a pretty good job of it. We have a good start.” (Brendan Sugrue)
Lions
Lions GM Brad Holmes said they are keeping their options open at No. 6 overall in the 2023 NFL Draft and have interviewed the top quarterbacks just in case.
“You don’t have a crystal ball, you’ve just got to do all the research, and we brought some quarterbacks in and did our just due on them,” Holmes said, via ProFootballTalk. “I say all the time, when you’re picking in the Top 10, you want to make sure you’re thorough on the quarterback market and I believe we’ve done that. We have a good idea. There’s always going to be a surprise on draft night, that’s what makes it fun, but we’ll definitely be prepared. We’ve got an idea, but you never know when a curveball might be thrown.”
- Arkansas WR Jadon Haselwood had a top-30 visit with the Lions. (Justin Melo)
Packers
Packers LT David Bakhtiari recently said that the team needs to play out their season and not worry about whether or not they are rebuilding as they transition from QB Aaron Rodgers to QB Jordan Love.
“We’re moving on from a Hall of Fame quarterback. I literally today talked to Jordan (Love) about this,” Bakhtiari said on Mike Silver’s podcast. “I’m like, ‘The Packers rebuilt from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers.’ What are we going to say? It’s not a rebuild? Like, that is what that is. And that’s totally fine. I’m not saying that we’re going to be bad. I’m not saying we’re going to be good. I don’t know and that’s the beauty. No one really knows how good they are. We start the season, everyone is batting 1.000. No one has any losses. No one has any wins. And let the season play out however it may be.”
Bakhtiari mentioned that he has no plans to retire this season but knows that in 2024 his cap number for the Packers will swell to $40.6 million.
“I think the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve definitely thought of the idea of retiring,” Bakhtiari said. “But I mean, right now, based on how I feel, I want to play longer definitely than I did last year. And I want to play longer definitely than I did two years ago. A big injury definitely kind of scares you, but once you kind of get out of the weeds and kind of see, I’m like, ‘Oh. That felt pretty good. I still got it like the young bucks.'”
“By the restructures that we’ve done collectively, the Packers and I, we’ve pretty much put ourselves in a predicament where it’s gonna be either cutting me or extending me,” Bakhtiari added. “That’s gonna be mutually decided upon, not today, not sometime in the near future. I think it’s gonna come down to, if I had to guess, as we play throughout the season, where I fit moving forward, and then also on my end where I want to be in my career and my life moving forward.”
Bakhtiari was also willing to address being criticized for using “they” instead of “we” or “us” when speaking about the team but clarified that he was referring to the front office.
“Yeah, I think there’s been a little bit of awkwardness and I think that really just stems from the lack of understanding and the fact that I have to spell it out,” Bakhtiari said. “I guess this is the platform to do it. ‘They’ is the front office. I am not the front office. Like I said before, when I act rationally and I take my emotions out and look from a business standpoint, I’m thinking from a third-person point of view. So it’s almost annoying the fact that I have to explain that. And that’s why I know I have Twitter and my ability to use my voice. So I’m like, by responding to any of this, it creates credibility and it makes it more real. When this is just people going off on a tangent, nitpicking said words. For what? Again, I’m not the type of person that’s gonna assassinate my sentences so you can find a cryptic message I’m trying to find. If I felt like I wanted to dissociate, I would flat out say, ‘I’m gonna dissociate.’ And that’s pretty black and white. There’s no gray area with me. So, again, if I have to spell it out even further. ‘They’ means the front office of the Green Bay Packers.”
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