Chicago Bears: Evaluating Ryan Pace’s decisions (Part 1)

Early draft evaluations of the Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace

Trying to understand the Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace has been a goal of mine since the day he was hired.  Ever since a few of my good friends wanted to travel to Chicago for the NFL draft back in 2014, I became obsessed with what’s going to happen. We started a group of draft followers that would attend every draft ever year and guess who would land on every team. Bonus points for those who get the correct player for their respective favorite team.

This became a highly competitive and fun thing to do. Soon we were researching more than just the NFL’s Bucky Brooks and Mike Mayock draft boards. Personally, I would check into Walter Football (a source for draft people) and figure out who was visiting which teams and create a spreadsheet on draft prospects to see if I could find a pattern on what my favorite NFL team would do.

It did not take long to understand that Ryan Pace targeted athletes above anything else. If you were an exceptional athlete and mildly productive in college you would likely get the nod before anybody else. Over time, Ryan Pace has started to focus more on productive leaders instead of just pure athletes. By 2018, the draft group and myself had a very solid idea of how Pace picked his players. Productive leaders, explosive athletes, followed by high production. It was basically in that order.