Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
Ryan Pace continues to shake up the Chicago Bears front office, bringing in a familiar face from the Saints in Josh Lucas to be the director of player personnel.
New Bears GM Ryan Pace is bringing Saints top scout Josh Lucas with him to Chicago. Lucas will take over as director of player personnel
— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) January 18, 2015
This comes just days after he parted ways with former director of pro personnel Kevin Turks. Turks had been a 13-year veteran in the Bears scouting department.
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As far as Lucas, he’s a Harvard man who graduated cum laude after playing safety for the Crimson from 1997-1998. After injuries ended his playing career, Lucas applied his football knowledge in the area of scouting. After a brief stint with the Jaguars in their marketing department, Lucas joined the Saints staff as a scouting assistant in 2005.
Lucas worked his way up the ladder, getting promoted to area scout in 2007. In 2013, Lucas was the southeast scout responsible for scouting guys like Saints safety Kenny Vaccaro.
Pace brings in a familiar face and another young “rising star” from the Saints front office to help him turn over the Bears roster in need of a need cleaning. You can expect more moves from Pace over the coming days and weeks now that his search for a head coach is over. I really doubt he’d make a move in the college scouting area before the draft, but if we’ve learned one thing from Pace so far, is that he’s not afraid to make a difficult decision.
After the Bears unveil John Fox, they’ll turn their attention to the roster. Pace, Fox and most of the Bears front office will descend on Mobile, Alabama for Senior Bowl practices as the Bears will be scouting prospects and looking for fill out the rest of their coaching staff.