Ryan Pace and the P-word

Hard to disagree with the examples shown.

I’d add another:  Adam Shaheen

Pace spent a 2nd round pick on a guy who was “baby Gronk” at a Div III school.  Guy has been an absolute failure when asked to go up against real competition.  The guys he played against in college are accountants and psychologists now.

Think that is the thing. People look at his early drafts with fox, and don't want to see growth.

Young and inexperienced GM's make mistakes, question is do they learn and grow. I think you see there is growth. Drafts and fas have gotten better. Talent coming in vs leaving is way higher on coming in.

Bad teams have. Constant turnover at gm/hc which creates constant overhauls on the team which create constant bad teams which create constant turnover at gm/hc. Chicago needs to break the cycle and stay the course to break the cycle. Got a good young core from gm to players. Issues are all in all small now find ways to short or long term fix them.

And fans need to realize they over estimated what this team was, sb window was never open.

Yes, there was a lot of hype, prob too much, but I disagree there wasn't a window open.  The D is still very good and I maintain that it would look way better than it has if the O had given it a modicum of support this season.  With the exception of the Washington game, one where the D scored a TD, the O has utterly failed to put up respectable yards, TOP, and most importantly, POINTS.  

Even with all the issues there have been at TE, OL, etc, with a decent O, esp decent QB play, this team is no worse than 5-3 right now, maybe even 6-2, and right in the thick of the playoff mix.  The team has been in every game, with the possible exception of Oakland, into the 3rd Q.  IIRC, there's only been one game where the we went into half down by 10 points or more and that's with the offense doing next to nothing almost every week.  It's been massive dysfunction on offense, particularly with the QB-HC duo, that has been the difference between being no worse than 1 game out of the division lead and where we are now which is playing out the string and needing a miracle turnaround to even make a wildcard.

Regarding Pace, I'll say this:

I'm not gonna hammer him much for Floyd.  In the absolute sense, he wasn't a very good pick in that he's an undersized (for the NFL) tweener type edge rusher who hasn't lived up to the standards expected of a top-10 pick.  In the relative sense, his draft turned out in hindsight to be not be a particularly good one at the top as there have only been a handful of players taken in the top-15 or so that year who have amounted to much.  So, all in all, Floyd was a decent pick given the Bears desperately needed a rusher at the time (McPhee burned out due to his knee injuries), just not the kind of talent and production you'd normally hope for of a top-10 draftee.

On Kevin White, I'm not gonna be as generous and yes I know there was no way to foresee he would be so hampered by injuries.  KW was a JUCO-transfer, one-year-production-only, one-trick-pony from a mid-tier collegiate program & conference.  He was the classic 'off the charts athlete, sub-par football producer' all-in-all.  More importantly, he was Pace's very first overall draft pick coming at time when the Bears had holes everywhere and were just starting a multi-year rebuild.  GMs nearly every year seem to fall in love with some highlight-reel athletic WR and ignore the fact that the positional value, particularly for team "needing help almost everywhere", is pretty poor for 'stud-WRs'.  Ask yourself this:  if KW hadn't been hurt those first 3 seasons, how many more games do you think the Bears would have won given how weak they were virtually everywhere else?  I would guess very few.  I look at "star top-10 WRs" as the cherry on top of the sundae.  If you have the foundation in place, sure a big, fast, talented WR (assuming the guy panned out) can take an already solid team and make it a real contender.  I don't see them making much difference on a roster that doesn't have that foundation in place.  Stud top-10 WRs like Fitzgerald, Julio Jones, Megatron, OBJ, and even Amari Cooper (if you want to include him there), have won zero SBs in like 40+ combined seasons.  They're the "icing on the cake" not the meat of the cake.  I think Pace made a poor choice there by being suckered into thinking that KW, even if he has stayed relatively healthy, was a wise foundational building block for a team that needed OL, DL, edge, Corner, and QB to name a few.  Pace should have a made a "solid contact on the ball" type pick rather than a "swing for the fences" one (to use a baseball analogy) given the circumstances.  Ideally he should have traded down to get more draft ammo and if that wasn't possible he should have made an unsexy choice like OL, DL, or even a solid DB.  Rookie mistake that set back the Bears rebuild by a full season IMO.

With Trubisky, he was kind of like the QB equivalent of Kevin White.  He had only one year starting and one year of production and success in a mid-tier college program and conference.  He struggled to beat out the other QB for the starting job until his senior year and that guy went on to be undrafted and out-of-the-league in short order.  As we all know, he was the highest drafted QB to have such limited college experience and production in a long time and therefore was a huge risk.  I fully admit I got suckered in too and I was wrong too.  Watson was the wiser and far safer choice given the knowledge available at the time.  And Pace traded away 3 mid-round picks to move up for him too!  Yes, I know some are gonna say "hindsight is 20-20" but there was info available back then that should have give Pace pause and, fair or unfair, GMs get both the credit and the blame for how their high draft picks, especially expected-franchise-QB choices, turn out.  And barring a miracle turnaround, this one turned out really badly.  Busting a #2 overall pick on your QB-of-the-future, especially with no real Plan-B in place, sets a franchise back years and that's unfortunately the predicament Chicago is in now.

Regarding Shaheen, I don't think anyone in their right mind can defend that pick, no matter how big a fan of Ryan Pace someone may be.  He was also a one-year wonder who played his entire college career at a small Div3 school against competition that wasn't remotely near NFL caliber and Pace wasted a 2nd round pick on that.  Shaheen was a guy maybe worthy of a 4th or 5th as a flyer only.  He was a terrible reach for where he was drafted and its should be no surprise to anyone that his ability to dominate against glorified-high-school competition in college didn't translate at all in the NFL.  He's been a spectacular bust that can't be excused away by injury.  And keep in mind he was chosen in Pace's 3rd draft so it's hard to give him a pass for GM-inexperience there either.

That's just the point, 66, he does a "fair job" only.  He's been really good on D and really bad on O.  That's not good; it's merely "fair".

No one expects any GM to hit on every draft pick or free agent signing.  We expect the hits to outnumber the misses, both qualitatively and qualitatively.  And we expect better results than have seen the season in the 5th year of Ryan Pace's tenure.  It's not like he hasn't had a fair shot.