Post by mpbears68 on Dec 12, 2020 21:20:32 GMT -6
Was he involved and assisting with multiple drafts with the Saints? Yes
If us dumb fans and plenty of dumb sportswriters can see the unforced errors he made, then yeah I kinda feel like he doesn't get to hide under the "I'm the new guy" excuse. Put another way, if it takes 4 years as GM to figure out how to stop screwing up early in the draft (where the impact is highest), then maybe he ain't the guy. And please name me ANY NEW GM who isn't "inexperienced as a GM". They ALL are! Unlike with HCs, it is pretty rare for GMs to get 2nd and 3rd gigs. So the excuses being made for Pace fall apart when you compare him to his peers. Pretty much every new GM hire is new-as-a-GM and virtually all of them inherit bad situations. That's why the old GM got canned.
As JABF and others point out, this is entirely Ryan Pace's team now after 6+ years at the helm. With only a few exceptions, the entire roster and coaching staff was assembled by and under him. He will finish this season with 1 playoff appearance out of 6, zero playoff wins, 1 winning season in 6, and an overall record of approx 40-57. That's Ryan Pace's "work product".
Involved and assisting = to running and drafting? No it's not the same, and the Bears knew it and were allowing him room to grow and evolve and gain the experience.
As others have pointed out, the obvious? Ya no shit he's been the GM for 6 years, the first 2 were spent unburying the team from the fuckup that was Emery, and that giant ignorant "someone was going to pay it to him" contract they gave to Cutler that set the team back years.
And you really cannot say it was truly his team if he truly had no say in who his HC was going to be, so I think at best it's a technically his team while not really his team.
HCs not infrequently get 2nd and 3rd teams down the road but most GMs do not. Most newly hired GMs have never been GMs before. There was nothing remotely unique about Ryan Pace's "lack of GM experience" when first hired. Most of the other 31 GMs in the league are/were in the exact same boat.
We don't have any way of knowing for sure whether Pace chose Fox or it was "an arranged marriage". Regardless, Pace certainly did chose Nagy and virtually the entire roster of players are his choices. Off the top of my head, only Fuller and Leno are left from the Emery-era. Everyone else was signed, drafted, or traded for by Pace.
This is Ryan Pace's team, good or bad.