Chicago Bears: The good and the bad of Ryan Pace’s draft pick history
What Ryan Pace has done wrong
Now onto the bad, and trust me, this part was a lot easier to write about. You can track Ryan Pace’s bad decisions all the way back to the year he was hired. In arguably the worst series of general managing moves in the history of the Chicago Bears, Pace kicked off his tenure in the windy city by hiring John Fox.
I won’t go into too much detail as to why I thought this was an awful hire, but prior to being in Chicago, Fox essentially took the most talented offense in the history of the NFL and laid an egg in the biggest television event in the United States. This, of course, is referring to the Peyton Manning-led Denver Broncos getting demolished by the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII. I will go to the grave saying that this was one of the worst single-game coaching performances in the history of the NFL.
Pace followed this hire by drafting Kevin White with the 7th overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft. White would only play in a handful of games and eventually be released. This was never an awful move, but there were red flags before drafting white and it was a risky move all-around. Even if he wasn’t injured his entire career, his experience was short and questionable.
Don’t worry though, as Pace would make up for this move by gathering any draft pick he could find and trading them to move up and pick the third-best quarterback available even though nobody thought he’d be drafted that high to begin with. Words cannot tell you how mad I was about everything related to this deal. Mitchell Trubisky could have become the greatest quarterback of all time and trading up for him still would have been a terrible move.
4 Bears who could have been great. dark. Next
On the bright side, since he gave away so many of his first-round picks, Bears fans wouldn’t have to endure many more draft busts in the recent future. And thankfully, this has been true up until this point. He hasn’t made anymore notably bad decisions and Chicago is facing a make-or-break season after stalling at 8-8 last year.