NFL Free Agency Rumors: Bears interested in Mike Glennon

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers want to retain Mike Glennon, and are willing to pay quite a bit of money to keep him. But the backup quarterback wants a real shot at a starting job — and he may get one, too.

According to CBS Sports’ Jason LaCanfora, the Chicago Bears are most interested in Glennon, with Jimmy Garoppolo likely out of reach.

As for Glennon, he is clearly poised at the top of a very shallow starting quarterback free agent market and several GMs around the league believe Chicago has the strongest current interest in him and will emerge as the front-runner to land him coming out of the combine. The Bears love Jimmy Garoppolo but that requires parting with multiple significant assets and they seem convinced Glennon can do the job. I’d anticipate the money being in the Ryan Fitzpatrick range from a year ago - $12 million per season -- with the chance to earn significantly more via production and incentives.

That’s quite a lot of money for a player whose interest on the open market is entirely unclear. In fact, the Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only two teams being linked to Glennon publicly, and the Bucs want him as just a backup.

Of course, it only takes one team for Glennon to get a big fat paycheck and leave Tampa. But this could just as easily turn out to be nonsense, or a smokescreen, or one of many, many free agent rumors that appear out of nowhere and disappear in the same way.

We’ll see where the Glennon winds below in a couple of days.