Day: May 1, 2015

David Haugh at the Chicago Tribune makes a savvy observation about Bears general manager Ryan Pace‘s first NFL draft pick:

“General manager Ryan Pace did what he vowed to do, taking the player at the top of his draft board at the time of the pick regardless of position. That White plays wide receiver on a team that needs to replace Brandon Marshall falls under the category of convenient. The Bears don’t need this White knight to save the offense but he will arrive with an opportunity to contribute immediately opposite Alshon Jeffery.”

“In selecting White over any one of the available pass-rushers, Pace punctuated his first draft with pragmatism. The NFL’s youngest GM didn’t arrive at Halas Hall determined to prove how smart he was or impress his new bosses. He took the gimme, proving that sometimes grasping the obvious is an underrated skill for executives.

“‘This was an easy pick,’ Pace said.”

White is a talented guy with a high ceiling. I’m not going to say he’s perfect and I’m not too sure the Bears wouldn’t have been better off with defensive tackle Danny Shelton as a safer pick who could still deliver a high impact.  Even as he praises the pick,  Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com provides relevant criticism:

“[I]t is disturbing that in the one season he played at Lackawanna Junior College – he sat out the 2010 season with a shoulder injury and missed 2011 because he missed the deadline for financial aid – he caught just 36 passes and he only caught 35 passes his first year at West Virginia.

“The bigger concern is that West Virginia plays a stripped down version of the spread offense in which White was only asked to run a handful of routes. He’s never had to make sight adjustments or read coverages and he’s not a natural route runner, occasionally looking more like a sprinter than a football player.

“So what the Bears have in White is either a perennial All-Pro who may end up dominating for the next decade, or another Cordarrelle Patterson.”

Still by almost everyone’s reckoning, this pick was a slam dunk. Most experts had the Bears taking White in this situation and, assuming there were no good offers to trade out of the pick, I have no problem with it. Given White’s size and physical traits, I think the odds are that he’ll work out fine. As Haugh indirectly points out, Pace’s handling of the situation stands in stark contrast to former Bears general manager Phil Emery, who always seemed to be trying to prove that he was the smartest guy in the room. Sometimes that worked out, as it did with the Kyle Long pick. But far too often, it didn’t.

Pace didn’t over think this. Sometimes the obvious thing is, in fact, still the right thing.

Jerome Blattner once said “A person who trusts no one can’t be trusted.” We’re about to see if and how that applies to the Chicago Bears quarterback situation in the aftermath of their attempt to trade quarterback Jay Cutler to the Tennessee Titans for the number two overall pick last night. John Mullin at csnchicago.com quotes Bears general manager Ryan Pace on the question of whether they tried to pull such a trade off:

“‘In my mind, we just got Jay another dynamic weapon,’ Pace said. ‘That’s why I’m excited about it. I hope right now he’s fired up because we just gave him another powerful weapon. With this receiving corps, this only adds to Jay’s ability to distribute the ball.'”

That’s not a denial. And it could mean trouble.

I’m of two minds when it comes to the attempt to trade Cutler. Rick Morrissey at the Chicago Sun-Times perfectly summarizes at least one of those:

“There is something unsettling about Jay Cutler continuing to get rewarded with talent around him [wide receiver Kevin White]. I’ll admit to more than a small hope Thursday that the Bears would move up to the second pick, trade Cutler to Tennessee and use the Titans’ pick to choose Marcus Mariota. But Tennessee stayed put and took the Oregon quarterback.

“What we’ve learned the past six years is that no matter how talented the players who line up on offense, Cutler tends to bring them all down to the mean. And by ‘the mean,’’ I mean ‘disappointment and disillusionment.’’ An offense with [Brandon] Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, Matt Forte and Martellus Bennett should have been better then 21st in total offense, as it was last season.”

There was a part of me – about half – that really wanted the Bears to complete this trade just to see Cutler leave town. But there was, on the other hand, the thought of the rest of the price that the Bears would have to pay in order to make that move – a package of picks including multiple first rounders. That’s a high price for a team with the number of holes the Bears have to fill.

What’s most relevant now is what effect this will have on Cutler. Most will recall that a similar situation in Denver where they tried to trade him resulted in him leaving Colorado and eventually becoming a Bear. I’m not saying that Cutler is going to go to Tennessee and pout this time around – he has grown at least that much. But the effect on his psyche could be more subtle and more damaging.

Cutler’s primary problem is that he has a very hard time trusting people. He doesn’t trust his coaches, he can’t throw with anticipation  because he doesn’t trust his receivers, heck he even backed out of his engagement before finally coming to his senses and marrying Kristin Cavallari. Now Cutler has been given tangible proof that he can’t trust the current Bears regime, either. They might not have lied to him. But at bare minimum they have now made it clear that they aren’t 100% behind him to run this team in action as well as in word.

My guess is that publicly Cutler will handle this move by saying and doing all the right things. But how it affects his performance on the field is another issue. He’s fragile even at the best of times. We may see a new level of unstable this year if the Bears aren’t careful.