The Chicago Bears are in a weird spot right now as an organization. Teams never want to tank or decide that their season is officially over after only eight weeks of a football season. However, as of now, the Bears are sitting fourth from the bottom in the NFC. They are only better than Washington, Detroit and the New York Giants. With the Chicago Bears failing so miserably and half a season to go, just how safe is Ryan Pace?
Let’s back things up a bit first, shall we? At the end of the 2020 season, many fans and analysts thought the end was near for both Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace. As we all know, Matt Nagy was in the third year of a five-year contract. However, things got murky at the end of the year when Ted Phillips was asked about the contract status of both Pace and Nagy.
Ted Phillips declines to clarify how long Pace's and Nagy's contracts run through. Wow.
— Adam Hoge (@AdamHoge) January 13, 2021
Ted Phillips specifically had this to say about the matter:
"“The contracts really aren’t part of this discussion,” Phillips said. “Ryan and Matt both know that when improvement is shown, they’ll take care of themselves. I’d like to leave that at that comment”"
Maybe this is where Matt Ryan learned how to say a lot of nothing — a word salad so to speak. Phillips did not help shed any light on how things are going contractually, but at least we know that Phillips and George McCaskey are at least not completely happy with how things have turned out. Throughout their end-of-season press conference, both had plenty of negative and positive things to say.
George McCaskey made the following statement:
"“We’re not satisfied with where we are now but we think both Ryan and Matt are the people best able to lead us to success,”"
Ted Phillips also stated:
"“Making the playoffs is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. We need to win in the playoffs and we need to compete for and win a championship. We know we need to get better.”"
These comments were not left as-is though. While trying to explain why Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace were not being fired, Phillips had this to say about their head coach and general manager:
"“Many teams, when you lose six games in a row, will fall and they will finger point as George pointed out, And they won’t recover from that. We did. “Did we do well in the playoffs? No. We haven’t won any playoff games in Ryan and Matt’s tenure. That’s not good enough. But we do think the foundation is in place, and they’re both solution oriented and we’re expecting improvement this year.”"
Do you see now why there is so much confusion just how safe both Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace are right now? Honestly, I do believe that Matt Nagy is on the hot seat more than Pace, but let’s take a look at just how safe Ryan Pace really is at this point.