The Bears are in a bit of a pickle.

Ryan Pace, their youngest and boldest GM, has stacked his chips on number ten and is waiting for the wheel to spin. The development of Mitch Trubisky will define Pace’s tenure with this organization and determine greatly whether this is a fun team to watch over the next five seasons.

But Pace now must answer a pivotal question and he must answer it in this calendar year.

Are John Fox and his coaching staff

the right guys to get the most out of Trubisky?

The Bears can arguably afford a season under Fox, with offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains and quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone focused on Trubisky’s fundamentals: snaps, mechanics, getting the play into the huddle…etc. But as Trubisky makes the transition from the classroom to the field, stability will be of the utmost importance. Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are the gold standards at quarterback in the NFL. It’s no coincidence that both have taken every single snap of their NFL careers under one head coach. (By the same token look at what instability has done to the productivity of Flacco, Eli, Rivers…etc.)

Read More …

Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

The Bears traded up in the 2017 NFL Draft to get their future. If Ryan Pace & Co. are right about Mitch Trubisky, the Bears are looking at a decade plus of sustained, consistent success. If they are wrong, Bears fans are about three years away from another change in leadership.

Yesterday I had a friend on the golf course repeat the completely debunked “fleeced” narrative to me. You know, the one about how Genius John Lynch took all of Gullible Ryan Pace’s money over a street corner game of three-card monte. Fleeced, they say. FLEECED?!?! The Bears gave up some mid-round picks in order to attain theirs (and basically the entire league’s) most highly-rated quarterback in the draft. They didn’t trade Jordan Howard, Kyle Long and two future firsts. They didn’t even go so far as to give up a pristine, beautiful, perfect second-round selection. They gave up some thirds. A fourth. And got their guy.

[For those who haven’t read Peter King’s piece from inside the Niners draft war room, please read it. His reporting was terrific.]

What has been completely lost in the Trubisky conversation/debate is this: the kid is a great prospect. Not good. Not interesting. Great. In my mind, he was light years above the others in this quarterbacking crop and significantly better than either of the top quarterbacks from a year ago.

[For those who think this is me defending the Bears, Trubisky was my second favorite player in this draft. I have a blog where I write things. This is on the record HERE.]

Trubisky has size, speed, elusiveness, arm strength, intelligence, guts and – perhaps most importantly – he’s all football, all the time. The Tarheel signal caller may not pan out as one of the league’s best quarterbacks but it won’t be because he hasn’t put in every single second required to do so.

Oh, and that guy described above? He’s on the Bears now! He’s on the Bears because they have a general manager who knew Mike Glennon is nothing more than a guy who could have carried the water for a year should the team had been unable to attain a quarterback in this year’s draft. They have a general manager who recognizes ‘good enough’ at quarterback in the NFL is never good enough.

When Jerry Angelo made the boldest move in modern Chicago Bears history – giving up a pile of picks to acquire Jay Cutler – it changed the franchise for the next decade. Did it work out? No. For a myriad of overly-analyzed and debated reasons the Bears didn’t win enough games with Cutler at quarterback. Was it the right move to make? Unquestionably.

The second boldest move in modern Chicago Bears history happened Thursday night, April 27th, about fifteen minutes after the 2017 NFL Draft commenced. In the long-term it could provide the Bears their Aaron Rodgers and cement Pace’s legacy in Chicago. In the short-term it has lined the mirror and handed a rolled up $20 bill to Bears fans and media. A quiet coffee shop of an off-season program and Bourbonnais summer has become 2 AM at Limelight in the 80s.

For years we heard defensive coordinator Greg Blache tell us sacks were not important when it comes to pass rush. When while wide receivers were dominating the game, we watched Angelo ignore the position year after year after year. Now the Bears are led by a man aware of his surroundings and unafraid to dramatically alter them in an attempt to improve. It’s called guts, folks, and the Bears GM has ’em.

He’s taken the risk. Now we all hope to reap the reward. And in the meantime, there’s a buzz about the Bears again.

Howard, Skuta Signings Add Reliability, Depth

If you haven’t read Andrew Dannehy’s piece on why the Bears defense will improve in 2017, you should. It is a detailed explanation of why this unit will continue its ascent up the rankings and join the top shelf of the league’s defenses.

These two signings are about one thing: rush defense. For all the improvement the Bears defense made in 2016, they did not improve at all as a rush defense. A lot of this can be placed at the feet of injuries. Trevathan and Goldman were horribly missed for much of the season and the rush defense went flat into the toilet once Freeman was suspended.

Howard and Skuta are early-down, plug-and-play guys. And they are here to help the Bears get their rush defense to under 100 yards per game.

Morrissey on Changing Landscape in Chicago

Rick Morrissey in the Sun-Times wrote an interesting piece about how the Chicago sports landscape is so vastly different than it was five months ago. Here is what he had to say about the Bears:

Read More …

While they didn’t attack that side of the ball the way many people thought they should in the draft, the Bears defense should still be significantly improved in 2017.

Just last week the Bears made a significant addition to their front seven adding Jaye Howard from Kansas City. Howard is a bull against the run and has shown some ability to rush the passer, finishing with 5.5 sacks in 2015. He missed half of the 2016 season, but passed a physical and appears to be ready to go. Howard will start for the Bears and has the ability to play in their nickel packages, rotating with Eddie Goldman and Akiem Hicks, representing a significant upgrade over Mitch Unrein.

Howard will also push second-year player Jonathan Bullard. Bullard has the potential to be a stud but was terrible as a rookie. If the Bears — with one of the best defensive line coaches in the league in Jay Rodgers — can develop Bullard, they might have the best front seven in the league.

Read More …

Photo: Jasen Vinlove, USA TODAY Sports

The Chicago Bears secured the man they believe is their quarterback of the future when they grabbed Mitch Trubisky with the 2nd overall pick in the draft. There has been plenty of discussion about the wisdom of that move, so I am not here to add to that.

Here is what I am curious about: as a Bears fan, what can I look forward to in the next few years if Trubisky does or does not pan out?

Quarterback is the most important position in football, so it makes sense that hitting or missing on one will have a significant impact on the immediate future of the franchise. This is especially true when you have committed such a high pick – a premium resource -to a quarterback and thus are determined to give him a few years to succeed.

General Setup

Thus I went back and looked at all of the quarterbacks drafted in the top 5 of the draft over the last 20 years to see how the franchise drafting them fared for the 5 years after the draft. Since I’m looking at 5 years, the most recent draft I could use was 2012, so the sample here looked at all 26 quarterbacks drafted in the top 5 between 1993 and 2012.

Read More …

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke) 

Sure, there’s plenty of football to be discussed and dissected over the next eight months. But the future of the Chicago Bears rests on the development and performance of one Mitch “Friends Call Me Mitchell” Trubisky. That’s it. That’s the story moving forward.

Here are the probable scenarios at quarterback for the coming season.

• Trubisky beats out Glennon before the start of the season. This is the dream scenario for experiencing 2017. Trubisky is the future and the faster we can get to the future, the more exciting Sundays will be. I believe Trubisky is better than Glennon right now, right at their current abilities, and I don’t doubt for a second he’s going to make it hard for the organization to keep him off the field.
• Glennon is bad. If Glennon struggles for the first month of the season, what are the Bears going to do? They can’t turn to Shaw or Sanchez, whichever one makes the roster. Even if their hope is for Trubisky to spend all of 2017 on the sideline, they may be forced to alter the plan and get Trubisky on the field.
• Glennon is blah. This is the most likely and for me, as a fan, the worst-case scenario. A blah Glennon means a blah 2017 season and a weekly petitioning from this site to just play the damn kid.

Read More …

“I don’t want to be average around here, I want to be great and these are the moves you have to make.”-Ryan Pace

For the first time in my lifetime, at least the parts I can remember, the Bears have a General Manager who gets it.

They have a GM who doesn’t just want to make the playoffs or compete with the rest of the division.

They have a GM who wants to kick everybody’s ass.

And, for some reason, people are mad about it.

Read More …

Who Cares About Glennon?

Seriously, who cares? Rich Campbell makes the argument in Monday’s Tribune that the Bears must repair their relationship with the recently-signed QB before the start of the 2017 season. But Thursday night was a concrete, definitive statement from Ryan Pace: Glennon, you’re not the guy. (Thank God)

And I don’t care what Pace and Fox say about Glennon being the starting quarterback. They both know the ideal scenario is Mitch Trubisky winning this job in OTAs and over the summer and making it impossible to keep him off the field. That validates the pick and means the future of the franchise starts now.

Jahns, In a Paragraph

From Sun-Times beat and all-around nice guy Adam Jahns:

My favorite pick …

Make it two: tight end Adam Shaheen and running back Tarik Cohen. Both players face major jumps in competition after playing at small schools. It has seemingly been forgotten that the Bears did have needs on offense. They ranked 28th in scoring last year. They needed more firepower.

Read More …

I don’t have much to say that’s not already out there. So here are a few quick hits.

• Whole draft will be about Trubisky. The rest of this class can turn into All-Pros and nobody will care if Mitch Trubisky stinks. That’s the nature of making a splashy move for a quarterback in the first round.
• Said it on Twitter and I’ll say it here. People who booed Trubisky at the United Center should be ashamed of themselves. All the kid did was excel at a sport and get drafted to play it professionally. If you don’t like the selection, drive your worthless ass to Lake Forest and roll down the window. Classless bullshit that belongs in Philadelphia, not Chicago.
• Adam Shaheen and Tarik Cohen are the kinds of picks I like. Extraordinary talents with high upside. If Ryan Pace hits on those two guys the Bears offense just became far more dynamic.
• Eddie Jackson. Didn’t know he was in this draft. Seriously. Just didn’t know. But he was my favorite player on that Bama defense that featured three first-round picks. Hopefully his injury problems are behind him. But if he’s healthy in Bourbonnais it will be hard to keep him off the field.
• The Bears coached guard Jordan Morgan at the Senior Bowl and fell in love with him. Depth this year. Sitton’s heir apparent would be the hope.
• Rarely do I say this but because their last pick was in the fifth round and they only made five total, the Bears will be disappointed if 3-4 of these picks don’t become serious players. Usually you want 3-4 out of 7. Bears want 3-4 out of 5. Not easy. But doable.
• But it’s all about Trubisky.