It is easy to pin the blame on GM Ryan Pace for the problems on offense. He is the leader of their personnel department. All final decisions go through him. So when Chicago Bears fans are forced to watch another awful offensive product this year, he is going to get the blame. That is what comes with the job. However, it is also too simplistic of an answer to the sickness that seems to have plagued this organization for so long.
People tend to overlook one inescapable fact. The Bears’ offensive ineptitude didn’t begin when Pace arrived. They were present long before he was even on the team’s radar. They were there with Phil Emery, Jerry Angelo, and Mark Helfrich as well. When this sort of thing is the case, it might be time to ask a difficult question. Do the Bears have a problem with their scouting department? That is the one consistent thing about this entire mess. Many of the guys still working there now under Pace were working there under previous GMs too.
One quote stood out during the Pace hire back in 2015.
People didn’t read much into it at the time. After researching for this piece, it popped into my head again. A lot of people were convinced that the Bears were going to hire the then-Chiefs director of player personnel Chris Ballard as their next GM. He had deep ties to the organization and was having considerable success in Kansas City. It was a considerable shock when they passed on him in favor of Pace. Why? Former Bears scout Greg Gabriel offered an interesting answer.
“Chris may have scared them a little bit. Chris knows the problems that are within the organization and had ideas on how to clean them up, and I’m hearing that they didn’t necessarily like hearing that.”
“Chris worked here in Chicago a number of years, so he’s obviously got an opinion of how things are done,” Gabriel said. “Not necessarily talking about the structure of the roster, but just the organization as a whole. Chris has a very strong mindset. If he wasn’t going to have things exactly the way he wanted them, he’s not going to put himself in a situation where he’s going to fall. He doesn’t want to go into a situation and be like Phil Emery and two years later be fired.”
Ballard worked in the Bears scouting department for several years. If anybody might’ve recognized the major weaknesses in it, he would be the one. It would make sense then that he’d state to ownership his desire to purge and/or reshape the department entirely. That probably didn’t sit well with people. When Pace made it clear he wouldn’t do that, his odds of landing the job skyrocketed.
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Now the Chicago Bears are right back where they started
The team is old, floundering, and an absolute mess on offense. People are blaming head coach Matt Nagy for the problems and that’s fair. His system is widely panned across the NFL. Yet the lack of overall talent in certain areas only makes it look worse. Especially the offensive line. Take a look at the Bears’ drafting track record up front since 2000.
Offensive line:
Out of 24 total picks, only four can be called genuine hits in Long, Leno, Whitehair, and Daniels. The rest were busts or saw their careers derailed by injuries. It is difficult to produce any sort of consistent offense without controlling the trenches. Yet the ineptitude isn’t limited to that position group. Check out the Chicago Bears run across the same timeline at wide receiver and tight end.
Wide receivers and Tight ends:
Same song, different verse. A lot of busts, nobodies, and what-ifs hounded by health setbacks. Only one of them turned into a genuine star and he was traded before that happened. Even when this team somehow gets it right, they can’t seem to exploit it. The only position they’ve been consistently good at is running back. A position that is more outdated than ever in this modern NFL.
Blaming the GM and head coach for all the problems is totally fair. However, the truth is the long-term problems on offense go beyond the two current men in charge. That speaks to an organizational issue. One that may have to get cleaned up if this entire fiasco is ever to get truly fixed.