It turns out Ryan Pace’s grand plan to fix the Bears’ quarterback problem was something he easily could’ve done a year ago.
The team will sign veteran Andy Dalton to a one-year, $10 million deal, a source said, one year after choosing to trade a fourth-round pick for Nick Foles and commit to him for three seasons rather than sign Dalton on the cheap.
Pace always gets his man in the end — as long as his man isn’t Deshaun Watson or Russell Wilson.
Bringing in Dalton as the presumptive starter for 2021 can best be described as “dispiriting.” He is not a solution. He is better than Foles, but so is pretty much everyone. Even Mitch Trubisky was.
But this team needed more than a micro-upgrade at the most important position.
The Bengals spent nine years trying to decide whether Dalton, a three-time Pro Bowl pick, was a franchise quarterback and ultimately determined he wasn’t. The rest of the NFL apparently agreed, considering he ended up taking a one-year, $3 million deal as a backup in Dallas.
Dalton topped 92 in passer rating just once, in his career year. He had 25 touchdown passes, seven interceptions and a 106.2 passer rating in 2015, and while the Bears will surely tout his history with offensive coordinator Bill Lazor (like they did with Foles and Matt Nagy), those two didn’t work together until the following season.
In 2015, Dalton had an all-pro left tackle, a Pro Bowl tight end, an above-average running game and A.J. Green in his prime. The situation he’s stepping into now is just a little bit different. If this another quarterback like Foles, who will only thrive when everything around him is perfect, the Bears’ are wasting their time.
In Dalton’s other nine seasons, including 11 games with the Cowboys last season, his numbers were much more Trubisky-esque: 61.8% completions, 232.8 yards per game, a 1.6-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio and an 85.9 passer rating.
How could Pace possibly bet his future employment on Dalton?
Because he had few other choices. He was in a no-win situation of hoping a moonshot idea like Watson or Wilson would bail out the Bears, and it was a free fall from there to the backup plans.
There was no good answer other than those two. Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick — there’s not a name on that list who would’ve vaulted the Bears into Super Bowl contention.
But it was a predicament of his own making. He traded up to draft Trubisky when Watson and Patrick Mahomes were available. He made an almost equally damaging mistake by trading for Foles last season. Pace steered the Bears into this hole and couldn’t dig his way out.
From the creator of “We Signed Mike Glennon,” comes the new smash hit, “I Guess Andy Dalton is Our Starter.”
The only big swing left to take is in the draft, and the last person anyone wants making that call is Pace.
With the Bears picking 20th, he’ll have to outfox the rest of the NFL by trading up to steal one of the top five quarterbacks or drifting back because he knows something about one of the second-tier prospects that no one else does.
