Brandon Marshall will turn 31 before the start of the 2015 season, and he is coming off a year in which injuries slowed him quite a bit and forced him to miss his team’s final three games. Now, Marshall is not feeling that his future with the Chicago Bears is all that secure.
Marshall, who has typically been dominant when healthy, is owed $7.5 million in base salary next season. Now that the Bears have shaken up their coaching staff, he realizes his days could be numbered.
“I don’t think anybody would be (comfortable) sitting in the gray, but this is the National Football League,” Marshall said Wednesday, per Rich Campbell of The Chicago Tribune. “This is our business. It’s not a unique situation. It happens every single year.
“Like I said in the middle of the season, some players think that when you lose, oh, the coach is going to be gone. No, they move players, too. I get that and understand that.”
The Bears have hired John Fox as head coach and Adam Gase as offensive coordinator. Gase was a wide receivers coach in Denver when Marshall was still with the Broncos. Although Marshall did not get along with then-head coach Josh McDaniels, he insists he never had an issue with Gase, who he called an “awesome dude.”
“(Gase) knows what was going on, and he knows where I was wrong, and he knows where I was right,” Marshall explained. “So that’s the awesome thing about him — he’s always going to keep it real. He knows how to meet people where they’re at.”
Chicago already has a No. 1 wide receiver in Alshon Jeffery, who is still playing under his rookie deal and will make less than $1 million in base salary next season. If the Bears release Marshall, they would save almost $4 million against the cap.
Marshall often makes headlines with his mouth. If the new regime doesn’t want to deal with that and doesn’t value him at his age, he could very well be cast off.
