Pace: Now it’s surrounding your most important asset, QB...
Mar 22, 2018 10:42:28 GMT -6
butkus3595 likes this
Post by JABF on Mar 22, 2018 10:42:28 GMT -6
Dynamite article on Pace & the Bears & Trubisky... this is a "must read" for Bears fans, IMHO.
"now, it’s surrounding your most important asset, your quarterback, with weapons"
"now, it’s surrounding your most important asset, your quarterback, with weapons"
LINK
LESSON OF THE WEEK
Ryan Pace didn’t need another reason to be jacked about his quarterback’s future. But after a flurry of free-agent activity last week, the Bears GM got it from Mitch Trubisky anyway.
Maybe more meaningful? The incoming talent—receivers Allen Robinson and Taylor Gabriel, and tight end Trey Burton—was just as excited as the quarterback.
“Yeah, you could tell Mitch was excited, just through a quick text,” Pace said from his office the other night. “He’s fired up, and I know they’re all talking to each other. Today, Taylor was walking around the building in a Trubisky jersey. They’re all ready to go. It’s cool when you sense from the guys that we signed, how excited they are to play with him.
“And Mitch is equally excited, adding these pieces to what we already have.”
We keep getting these reminders, and there’s no need to overcomplicate it. Even after a year in which three of the final four teams left were led by a couple journeymen and a supposed draft bust, the lesson is there for everyone: The NFL is more about the quarterback now than it ever has been. Just look at what’s happened over the last six weeks alone …
• The Niners made Jimmy Garoppolo, he of the eight career starts, the highest paid player in league history, inking him to a five-year, $137.5 million deal.
• The Vikings trumped that, doing a three-year, $84 million deal with Kirk Cousins, while breaking new ground in fully guaranteeing the whole thing.
• The Chiefs gave Patrick Mahomes a shiny, if overpriced new downfield piece in Sammy Watkins—forking over a three-year, $48 million deal for him.
• The Texans gave multi-year deals to guards Senio Kelemete and Zach Fulton, and made a run at left tackle Nate Solder to better protect Deshaun Watson.
• The Jets traded three second-round picks to jump from 6 to 3, ensuring they’ll be in position to draft a top-tier quarterback.
So I asked Pace, is it too simplistic to say 2017 was about finding the quarterback for the Bears, and 2018 has been about building infrastructure around him?
“No, that’s accurate,” he quickly answered. “The hardest piece of this whole thing is to find the quarterback. We feel like we’ve done that. And so now, it’s surrounding your most important asset, your quarterback, with weapons so he can be successful and they can grow and develop chemistry together. And not just the quarterback and those players, but all of them and the new offensive staff. And they’re all young.”
And while Chicago’s actions have been interesting, its moves are just a part of a trend we’re seeing everywhere to over-invest in getting a quarterback, then over-invest in getting everything around him right.
Each of the six first-round quarterbacks drafted in the past two years were landed as part of a team trading up. The five who are starting going into 2018 have head coaches who were hired with extensive background working with quarterbacks as assistants. And last year, we saw the Eagles give Alshon Jeffrey to Carson Wentz, and the Rams give Robert Woods, Watkins and Cooper Kupp to Jared Goff.
That’s where Houston, Kansas City and Chicago are now—stocking the shelves for a sophomore quarterback. And so Pace gave us some insight into the steps the Bears took over the last two months to make it happen.
• Finding the coach. Four of the six candidates that Pace interviewed had background in coaching quarterbacks, something he says now was more just how things lined up this year. The priority was, in his words, to hire “the best leader and the best man.” He found it in coach Matt Nagy. Pace also concedes that the influence of all his years in New Orleans, seeing Sean Payton and Drew Brees together, absolutely crept into the search process.
“I try not to talk about New Orleans so much anymore, because it’s all about here now, but we all learn from our previous experiences,” Pace said. “When you think about, you look at Drew and Sean now, the levels they’re on, all they have to do is look at each other. The heights the offense has gone too, because of the cohesion between those two guys, that’s something everyone is striving for.
“It’s gonna be fun to have Mitch and Matt paired together long-term. … And a lot of times, if you have a successful play-caller, well, he’s gonna get plucked out of there to become a head coach elsewhere and then you break up the continuity between him and the quarterback. That’ll never happen here. So that’s the attractiveness of it.”
• Building a vision. The Bears struck a deal with Nagy in early January in Kansas City, and the coach and GM flew together on the McCaskeys’ plan back to Chicago. They didn’t necessarily mean for it to be this way, but that’s when the groundwork for March really began to take shape.
“It’s the first time he and I can just exhale and talk football,” Pace said. “The very first conversation we had involved how much he values the ‘U’ tight end, how productive the offense can be for those guys. And we went through it—who are some of those guys in free agency. And then all of the sudden, here’s Trey Burton.”
What stuck out to Pace was how specific Nagy was for each skill position. So Burton became the target as the move tight end, to pair with the supersized Adam Shaheen. Robinson was the big, smart route-runner who could shield defenders. Gabriel was the game-breaker. Each would be used to attack another level of the defense. And the scheme would work to do that too.
• Filling the staff. We mentioned a couple weeks back what a coup getting line coach Harry Hiestand from Notre Dame was. But as Pace explains it, the hire of former Oregon coach Mark Helfrich as offensive coordinator was a priority, too. It’s an addition that the Bears feel will help maximize Trubisky and others who worked in spread concepts as collegians.
“Matt was passionate about Helfrich from the very beginning,” Pace said. “They’d been on each other’s radar for a long time. Matt likes some of the outside-the-box thoughts he’s gonna bring from college. I’ll go down there at night right now, and Matt’s up on the board drawing plays with Helfrich and Brad Childress in there, and they’re bouncing ideas off each other, coming up with new things. It’s neat to see.”
So the big piece here is the kind of creativity to merge college and pro style that we’ve seen from Andy Reid’s Kansas City staff of late. What Doug Pederson’s done in Philly is an offshoot of it, too. And a side benefit? Pace said that the background Helfrich and Heistand have on this year’s draft class, having known a lot of the guys since they were 16-year-old recruits, has been invaluable.
If the Bears get it right with Trubisky, how they got there won’t matter much. And with the personnel, the coaches, and the scheme, the belief is they’ve given their quarterback every chance to make the team look good.
With that foundation set, the rest is up to him.
• Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.
LESSON OF THE WEEK
Ryan Pace didn’t need another reason to be jacked about his quarterback’s future. But after a flurry of free-agent activity last week, the Bears GM got it from Mitch Trubisky anyway.
Maybe more meaningful? The incoming talent—receivers Allen Robinson and Taylor Gabriel, and tight end Trey Burton—was just as excited as the quarterback.
“Yeah, you could tell Mitch was excited, just through a quick text,” Pace said from his office the other night. “He’s fired up, and I know they’re all talking to each other. Today, Taylor was walking around the building in a Trubisky jersey. They’re all ready to go. It’s cool when you sense from the guys that we signed, how excited they are to play with him.
“And Mitch is equally excited, adding these pieces to what we already have.”
We keep getting these reminders, and there’s no need to overcomplicate it. Even after a year in which three of the final four teams left were led by a couple journeymen and a supposed draft bust, the lesson is there for everyone: The NFL is more about the quarterback now than it ever has been. Just look at what’s happened over the last six weeks alone …
• The Niners made Jimmy Garoppolo, he of the eight career starts, the highest paid player in league history, inking him to a five-year, $137.5 million deal.
• The Vikings trumped that, doing a three-year, $84 million deal with Kirk Cousins, while breaking new ground in fully guaranteeing the whole thing.
• The Chiefs gave Patrick Mahomes a shiny, if overpriced new downfield piece in Sammy Watkins—forking over a three-year, $48 million deal for him.
• The Texans gave multi-year deals to guards Senio Kelemete and Zach Fulton, and made a run at left tackle Nate Solder to better protect Deshaun Watson.
• The Jets traded three second-round picks to jump from 6 to 3, ensuring they’ll be in position to draft a top-tier quarterback.
So I asked Pace, is it too simplistic to say 2017 was about finding the quarterback for the Bears, and 2018 has been about building infrastructure around him?
“No, that’s accurate,” he quickly answered. “The hardest piece of this whole thing is to find the quarterback. We feel like we’ve done that. And so now, it’s surrounding your most important asset, your quarterback, with weapons so he can be successful and they can grow and develop chemistry together. And not just the quarterback and those players, but all of them and the new offensive staff. And they’re all young.”
And while Chicago’s actions have been interesting, its moves are just a part of a trend we’re seeing everywhere to over-invest in getting a quarterback, then over-invest in getting everything around him right.
Each of the six first-round quarterbacks drafted in the past two years were landed as part of a team trading up. The five who are starting going into 2018 have head coaches who were hired with extensive background working with quarterbacks as assistants. And last year, we saw the Eagles give Alshon Jeffrey to Carson Wentz, and the Rams give Robert Woods, Watkins and Cooper Kupp to Jared Goff.
That’s where Houston, Kansas City and Chicago are now—stocking the shelves for a sophomore quarterback. And so Pace gave us some insight into the steps the Bears took over the last two months to make it happen.
• Finding the coach. Four of the six candidates that Pace interviewed had background in coaching quarterbacks, something he says now was more just how things lined up this year. The priority was, in his words, to hire “the best leader and the best man.” He found it in coach Matt Nagy. Pace also concedes that the influence of all his years in New Orleans, seeing Sean Payton and Drew Brees together, absolutely crept into the search process.
“I try not to talk about New Orleans so much anymore, because it’s all about here now, but we all learn from our previous experiences,” Pace said. “When you think about, you look at Drew and Sean now, the levels they’re on, all they have to do is look at each other. The heights the offense has gone too, because of the cohesion between those two guys, that’s something everyone is striving for.
“It’s gonna be fun to have Mitch and Matt paired together long-term. … And a lot of times, if you have a successful play-caller, well, he’s gonna get plucked out of there to become a head coach elsewhere and then you break up the continuity between him and the quarterback. That’ll never happen here. So that’s the attractiveness of it.”
• Building a vision. The Bears struck a deal with Nagy in early January in Kansas City, and the coach and GM flew together on the McCaskeys’ plan back to Chicago. They didn’t necessarily mean for it to be this way, but that’s when the groundwork for March really began to take shape.
“It’s the first time he and I can just exhale and talk football,” Pace said. “The very first conversation we had involved how much he values the ‘U’ tight end, how productive the offense can be for those guys. And we went through it—who are some of those guys in free agency. And then all of the sudden, here’s Trey Burton.”
What stuck out to Pace was how specific Nagy was for each skill position. So Burton became the target as the move tight end, to pair with the supersized Adam Shaheen. Robinson was the big, smart route-runner who could shield defenders. Gabriel was the game-breaker. Each would be used to attack another level of the defense. And the scheme would work to do that too.
• Filling the staff. We mentioned a couple weeks back what a coup getting line coach Harry Hiestand from Notre Dame was. But as Pace explains it, the hire of former Oregon coach Mark Helfrich as offensive coordinator was a priority, too. It’s an addition that the Bears feel will help maximize Trubisky and others who worked in spread concepts as collegians.
“Matt was passionate about Helfrich from the very beginning,” Pace said. “They’d been on each other’s radar for a long time. Matt likes some of the outside-the-box thoughts he’s gonna bring from college. I’ll go down there at night right now, and Matt’s up on the board drawing plays with Helfrich and Brad Childress in there, and they’re bouncing ideas off each other, coming up with new things. It’s neat to see.”
So the big piece here is the kind of creativity to merge college and pro style that we’ve seen from Andy Reid’s Kansas City staff of late. What Doug Pederson’s done in Philly is an offshoot of it, too. And a side benefit? Pace said that the background Helfrich and Heistand have on this year’s draft class, having known a lot of the guys since they were 16-year-old recruits, has been invaluable.
If the Bears get it right with Trubisky, how they got there won’t matter much. And with the personnel, the coaches, and the scheme, the belief is they’ve given their quarterback every chance to make the team look good.
With that foundation set, the rest is up to him.
• Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.
