It’s usually a simple equation.
A general manager who errs at quarterback with the No. 2 overall pick and hovers near the bottom of the league for most of his tenure gets fired. That alone is grounds for the Bears to dismiss Ryan Pace, but it’s highly unlikely.
They seem fine with being just fine.
Beyond the lenient walls of Halas Hall, Pace’s approval rating hit an all-time low after the blowout loss to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs on Sunday and, Mahomes reminded everyone that Pace snubbed him in the 2017 draft by counting to 10 on his fingers.
That game didn’t expose anything new. It was merely the smoke alarm going off long after the casserole had been burnt.
Like the Trailblazers choosing Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan, the Bears will forever be a punch line for trading up to choose Mitch Trubisky at No. 2 while Mahomes went 10th and Deshaun Watson went 12th. The only way Pace avoids that defining his career is if he becomes the architect of a Super Bowl winner.
There’s little indication the Bears are on that path or that he can get them there.
In almost five seasons with Pace, the Bears are tied with the Dolphins for the eighth-worst record in the NFL at 33-46. The Redskins, Lions, Raiders and Cardinals have all been better. The Bears are also one of 13 teams that haven’t won a playoff game.
Offense has been an unsolvable puzzle for Pace, and that problem is rooted in bad choices at quarterback. He paid Mike Glennon $16 million for four pitiful starts in 2017, then shifted to Trubisky. The only teams that have scored fewer points than the Bears the last five seasons are the Browns, Dolphins and Jets — not exactly Club Dub.
Counting the playoff loss to the Eagles, the Bears are 19-13 the last two seasons with Matt Nagy as coach and Trubisky as the full-time starter. They’ve beaten one heavyweight — the Rams last season — and did so despite Pace’s quarterback playing arguably the worst game of his life.
Poor Trubisky. It’s not his fault Pace staked his reputation on him. He’s floundering, but he wouldn’t be a devastating disappointment if he’d been picked in the 20s. In that sense, the fury toward Trubisky ought to be aimed at Pace.
There’s a lot of worthwhile nuance in assessing Pace’s work and he absolutely has made some great moves, but he’s unfit for the road ahead.
He has also been unwilling to answer for his roster’s flaws as this season fell apart, shielding himself with a policy of Nagy being the voice of the organization during the season. The contradiction is that Pace talks every week in the safety of the team-run radio pre-game show.
If — and it’s a massive if — he can concede that Trubisky is not the answer, the Bears need to immediately find a new quarterback. And if they need a quarterback, should Pace pick the next one? That’s the conversation ender.
But the easy move for the Bears will be to keep the status quo. Give Pace one more season. Give Trubisky one more season. Try once more to make a run at the Super Bowl with a great defense and an inept offense. Kick the hard work down the road.
But keeping everything the same is going to get the same results. Maybe things go their way injury-wise and the schedule tilts favorably and they manage to go 10-6, but it won’t be significant. Going 10-6 and 6-10 are both mediocre.
The Bears will still have that queasy feeling of knowing they don’t have the firepower to keep up. Nagy said he spent much of this season thinking, “If we don’t hold them to under 14 points, we don’t have a chance.”
No one wants to sit through another week of that, let alone a year.
