Charles Tillman is a Bear to the bone. He had his most glorious years in football wearing navy blue and orange. He knows what successful teams look like and understand how they’re constructed. After all, he went through the stages himself as a player. That’s why getting his opinion on the state of this current generation of Bears was so interesting. Here is what he told WGN Radio 720.
“I mean I think as a Bears fans and a Bears alum, I think they’re a couple years away from being good. They gotta get the right pieces. They’re not there yet.
They’re in rebuild mode, they’re going to have to address a lot of stuff right now. I mean obviously the quarterback being one of them but they’re just a couple years away from being great.”
It’s a sobering statement. Then again Tillman speaks from experience. The Bears were in a bad way by the time he’d arrive in 2003. Even with the arrival of him and Lance Briggs, it still took another two seasons and a coaching change before Chicago finally broke through to the playoffs. They say it typically takes a franchise three years to build a winner but in truth it’s closer to five. Particularly when it comes to full, down-to-the-foundation rebuilds like this one.
Ryan Pace inherited the oldest roster in the NFL back in 2015. Anybody with a lick of medical knowledge knows that organ transplants can get ugly and time-consuming. It’s no different when gutting and reforging a football team. It’s about who can stay the course, do the work and not panic in the face of the process. Peanut is essentially telling everybody to trust that process, no matter how much it hurts.
