The Chicago Bears face a Friday deadline to decide pick up Josh Sitton’s 2018 option. What they do could give a clue as to their plan at offensive line.

Now that the Super Bowl is over with, every team’s focus now is on the offseason. That’s the good news. The bad news is that free agency isn’t until March and the draft is a month after that. In the meantime, much speculation on the moves the Chicago Bears make will run rampant.

While the big questions won’t be answered for a while, some clues could surface. The first of them is the Bears’ plan for the offensive line. They face a Friday deadline for picking up the 2018 option on guard Josh Sitton.

The move they make goes a long way to determining what the Bears do both in free agency and the draft. The Bears need to make some improvements on the line. The thing is, how much improvement does it need?

Some view the Bears’ line as being very bad. They see a need to overhaul the line to better protect the chosen one, quarterback Mitch Trubisky. Others see a need to just tweak the line and not an overhaul. Replace a player or two and add depth.

Sitton came to the Bears after the Green Bay Packers cut him in 2016. He had a Pro Bowl season in 2016 but this season he slowed down due to injuries. He missed three games and came out of others because of those injuries. There were rumors that general manager Ryan Pace made Sitton available just before the trade deadline. Nothing happened, however.

Now the Bears need to decide if having Sitton is a practical choice. If they pick up the option, they pay him $8.5 million. If they pass, the Bears save $7.9 million in cap space.

That cap space is very valuable at the moment. According to Overthecap.com, the Bears are about $41 million below the cap. Some expect it to go up between $7-11 million, so that gives them $50 million. However, there are some cuts the team could make that may bring that total up to close to around $90 million or more.

Sitton is one of those cuts.

Sitton decision affects both draft and free agency moves

The decision the Bears make on Friday affects their postseason plans. If they keep him, the Bears likely pick a lineman early in the draft to add depth and to groom him to be a starter. If, though, they feel there is a lineman in the draft who is ready to step in they’ll let Sitton go.

If they do let Sitton go, look for the Bears to pick up a lineman to be a part of the rotation. They need to add depth so they’ll pick up a solid, if not remarkable, lineman. A good rotation player can be had for $3-4 million. That means, though, that the Bears need to pick up a lineman in the first or second round.

Remember also, the Bears also have Jordan Morgan. He spent the entire 2017 season learning the NFL way. His injury might be a blessing in disguise. If the Bears feel he’s ready to play, that’s another strike against Sitton.

Offensive linemen aren’t sexy, I know, but they are crucial to an offense’s success. We’ve seen time and again how a bad line puts a quarterback in danger and prevents the running game from progressing.

I think the Bears need to pass on Sitton. He’ll be 32 when the season begins. He missed three games in 2017 and I believe that is a sign of his body starting to break down. That’s six games he’s missed in the two seasons in Chicago. It’s just going to keep adding up. That’s not a situation you want to be in, especially paying $8.5 million.

In any case, we’ll see some new faces on the offensive line in 2018. Hopefully, the moves help Trubisky and the Bears win more games.