Ryan Pace deserved some respect. He took on a less than ideal job in 2015. The Chicago Bears had the oldest roster in the NFL. The locker room was fractured beyond repair. It was painfully obvious the team would need a complete rebuild. For him to accept that challenge took a lot of guts. Other candidates wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with that.
He cleaned out the locker room, rebuilt the culture, and proceeded to construct one of the best defenses in the NFL. Sadly all that work wasn’t enough. Pace knew his big moment would come when he took that big swing for a quarterback. The moment finally arrived in 2017. Things had set up perfectly. Chicago held the #3 overall pick. The draft class had three quality QB prospects to choose from. Just don’t whiff.
In the end, he went with Mitch Trubisky.
Everybody knows the story after that. While a good kid with plenty of raw talent, Trubisky failed to showcase the necessary mental aptitude for the position no matter how hard he seemed to work. Pace made matters worse by constructing a mostly average offensive line and then putting a head coach in Matt Nagy in charge of the QB’s development. Moves that have led the Bears to where they are now. In a complete freefall.
This has led to the questions. Why did things go this way? What did the Bears miss when they made the decision to hire Pace? A fascinating article by Brad Spielberger of Pro Football Focus may shed some light on then. In interviewing several NFL personnel people from executives to scout, he constructed a list of three things that make good GMs. What stood out the most in regards to Pace was #2.
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“There’s no blueprint for how to become a GM, no set path. Experience matters in every profession, but it matters even more when there’s no manual for the job. Often, some of the most qualified candidates are those who have seen how things operate under multiple ideologies/philosophies. If you only know one way, you may have blind spots/deficiencies.”
Ryan Pace only had one teacher before getting his shot
This explanation does make a ton of sense. Examples are littered across the NFL. Steelers GM Kevin Colbert worked under Mike Robbie in Miami and Chuck Schmidt in Detroit before heading to Pittsburgh. Vikings GM Rick Spielman also worked under Schmidt along with Mark Hatley in Chicago. Seahawks GM John Schneider worked under Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson in Green Bay along with Carl Peterson in Kansas City. Jerry Angelo worked under George Young in New York and Rich McCay in Tampa Bay.
Pace? He could make no such boast. When he arrived in New Orleans as a scout, the organization was being run by GM Mickey Loomis. That structure would remain mostly unchanged for the next decade as Pace climbed the ladder to personnel director by 2013. So while he was part of a successful organization, he’d only ever seen a single team-building philosophy.
This proved vitally important for one key reason.
Loomis never taught Pace how to properly evaluate quarterback prospects in the draft. Since 2002, the Saints GM has drafted five quarterbacks. Collectively they played 18 total games in the NFL. His track record isn’t great, which may explain why he made his big swings on the veteran market with Aaron Brooks, Drew Brees, and Teddy Bridgewater among others. Ryan Pace never got the vital education on what to look for and prioritize when drafting a good quarterback.
Now to be fair some guys are exceptions to the rule. They just have that inherent sense to know what to look for. That being said, the Bears clearly didn’t do enough homework on Pace. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Keep this in mind. Their 2014 season ended on December 29th. By January 8th they’d hired him to be their new GM. A span of fewer than two weeks. In contrast, the hiring of Angelo back in 2001 came after six weeks of research and interviews.
Hopefully this time around they’ll have learned their lesson.
