It seems like a foregone conclusion that Ryan Pace’s job is safe. But should it be?

The 2019 Bears are looking at a 6-10 season, just one win better than the embarrassing, dysfunctional 2014 team Pace inherited. We haven’t gotten the consecutive embarrassing losses or locker room fights like we did in 2014, but there’s still time.

The talent levels of the teams aren’t all that different when you consider very few of the offensive starters from the 2019 version would start for the 2014 team and the gigantic difference at quarterback. This defense is a lot better than the 2014 unit but you could still argue a couple defenders from that squad — Jay Ratliff and Willie Young — would start on this year’s defense.

2019 will never reach 2014 in terms of dysfunction, but they may be well past them in terms of disappointment.

The Bears will be winning fewer than eight games for the fourth time in Pace’s five years as general manager and his decision to take Mitchell Trubisky over a sure thing in Deshaun Watson and a guy some already consider to be the best quarterback they’ve ever seen in Patrick Mahomes has become a joke. NFL owners don’t like when their team is a joke.

One can argue that Pace actually built a very strong and talented roster, but this is a quarterback’s league and is there’s any reason to think Pace can get that position right?

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In August of 2005 I self-produced my first play, Shore Points, at the Irish Arts Center in New York. It was a limited run but still ranks amongst the most exciting experiences of my life. I decided over the run to sell Coors Light cans in the lobby for the powerful, almighty “suggested donation” as a means of erasing at least some of the credit card debt I was quickly accruing. My family came. My friends came. Friends of my family came. Family of my friends came. And they all drank. A lot.

I took the cash and went to Ireland with Noah Brier, co-founder of this website, in October of that year. We were in a town called Dundalk on Sunday October 16th. Dundalk like many Irish towns is in a Catholic coma on Sundays aside from a few pubs specializing in fine Sunday roasts serving creatures most of us find cute. No smart phones. No open internet cafes. Nothing. And the Bears were playing the Vikings at noon CT.

We found a pay phone. And for three hours continually called a friend in New York. Every fifteen minutes or so. We didn’t stop calling until Thomas Jones ran in a longish touchdown early in the fourth quarter, making the game 21-3. Updates at an Irish payphone. More than $40 spent. That’s how much I care about the Chicago Bears. That passion led to the creation of this website a few weeks after I arrived back in the states.

For the last three weeks, for the first time in my life, I have watched the Chicago Bears play football and not cared an iota about the result. They have played the care out of me. They are a nothing team led by nothing men deserving nothing from their dedicated fans.

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