Rick Telander at the Chicago Sun-Times calls upon GM Ryan Pace to comment on the current sad state of the team:
The times cry out for a big statement from the man who orchestrated this mess afield, from the man who hired coach Matt Nagy, traded for high-priced defender Khalil Mack, picked quarterback Mitch Trubisky in the 2017 draft and brought in Nick Foles as a hopeful but failed offensive savior.
If the Good Ship Bears is sinking, the man who built the hull, loaded the cannons and hoisted the mainsail ought to stand on the pier and tell us what the hell is going on.
Mr. Pace, sir?
I understand why Telander is writing this. If I were in the business of selling newspapers, I’d want comments from as many people associated with the organization as I could get from Virginia McCaskey down to the janitor. And I’d want them no matter what the situation was, winning or losing.
Gotta fill all those pages with something to satisfy the insatiable demand for more content from fans all over the city, right?
The problem is that Pace and the McCaskeys have to think about what’s best for the organization first. And what’s best isn’t for them to comment right now.
The Bears, like every NFL team, need one voice at any one time. The players need one message and they need to be listening for it from one guy. During the season, that has to be the head coach. They can’t be worrying about what the GM or the owner said about their performance, either as individuals or as a team. They can’t have mixed messages floating through their heads from different people who, though they all think that they are on the same page, express things differently with different potential interpretations.
They need one, unified message from the guy whose job it is to turn things around and to turn them around right now. There’s time enough later to worry about what the guy who has their future in his hands thinks. Right now, he’s irrelevant. Their job is concentrate on doing their jobs and to win games. The best way to do that is listen to the coaches and perform.
And, honestly, what is Pace going to say? We all know its going to be a bunch of word salad that comes down to “We mis-evaluated the situation”. And, boy, did they ever. They mis-evaluated the talent on the offensive line, they mis-evaluated the quarterback position, they mis-evaluated the pass rushers that they threw money at, and, above all, they went all in after mis-evaluating where this team was in terms of its readiness to compete for a championship.
We know all of that. We don’t need to hear them say it. Yet.
For now, Nagy has a job to do. He needs to be able to do it without any interference from Pace or ownership or anyone else. He needs to be the one voice of the franchise. There’s an entire off-season to talk about the rest.
And, hey. We need content to fill all those pages with content then, as well, right?