The Chicago Bears have officially decided to make a change at General Manager, letting Ryan Pace go this morning. The news is somewhat surprising to many considering we know that ownership views Pace in high esteem.
However, anyone who looks at what Pace has done over his career at Chicago knows that he has made too much of a mess to be retained. The team needed to start new.
The biggest issue that Pace had was that the last two seasons he started to press to try to save his job rather than be patient and try to set himself up for the longterm. It left the Bears in a spot where they are not ready to rebuild this roster quite yet.
These are some of the first things that a new General Manager will have to look at.
5. Jimmy Graham Contract
The Jimmy Graham contract has to be one of the biggest reasons that Pace is being let go. It spoke to his inability to be patient and to throw money around carelessly. Graham was aging and on the downside of his career, but Pace made him one of the highest-paid tight ends in the NFL.
By the end of the season, Graham was a number three tight end. Graham is going to be a free agent this season and is possibly going to retire. However, how Ryan Pace structured his contract has the Chicago Bears eating $4.6 million in dead money either way.
That is not back-breaking, but now a GM has to walk in knowing that he is down that money and not going to get anything out of it. It is the deals like this that cost Pace his job.
4. Danny Trevathan Contract
Arguably worse than Jimmy Graham is the Danny Trevathan contract. The issue with Trevathan is that he had a long history of injuries in his 20s. To think he would not carry that into his 30s in the NFL was foolish.
Then, the Bears overpaid him because Pace wanted that veteran in the middle during his win-now bid. Many expected him to be hurt throughout his new extension, and he has been. Trevathan was poor on the field in 2020 and started one game in 2021.
Now, Trevathan will be 32, his play has declined, and the list of injuries is even longer. Worse than that is that he still under contract and it will be tough for the Bears to move on.
While the BEars have to eat some money on Graham, they have to decide if they want to keep Trevathan, or just eat nearly $9 million in cap space just to move on from him.
It helps long term just to bite the bullet and move on, and if he cannot stay healthy they have to move on, but these are the tough calls that a GM has to walk into because of Pace.
3. Quarterback dilemma
The biggest thing that Ryan Pace did was draft Justin Fields and if Fields turns out alright, everything will be fine. However, Pace used a lot of assets to get there. Beyond the picks are the additions of Nick Foles and Andy Dalton.
We know that any GM that takes the Chicago Bears job is starting Fields, so Dalton and Foles have no use to them. As we have seen they are stylistically different from Fields, and neither would even be a great backup.
Unfortunately, that means more dead money for the Chicago Bears. Dalton is going to cost them $5 million because of the way his deal was structured, and Foles may be on the books for $7.6 million.
If, and that is a big if, they can find a trade partner for Foles they can save $5M. Still, that is just one more thing for the new GM to work on. He has to decide on Trevathan and Foles while eating money for Dalton and Graham.
2. Khalil Mack cap hit
Nobody is questioning the Khalil Mack trade, and he has been great on the field. However, Pace has once again made a mess in an effort to win big in the past two years. He restructured and pushed back the contract of Khalil Mack as much as he could.
Now, Mack will enter 2022 with a $30M cap hit, which would make him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL based on the 2022 cap hit. That includes all quarterbacks.
Khalil Mack is still fine when he is healthy, but the days where he is the best defender in the NFL are probably over, and now he is making big-name quarterback money,
Ryan Pace got the best years of Mack, and now the new GM has to pay for it. The big issue here is that there is not much he can do about it.
The new GM can extend Mack, and push his cap hit back further, but it just leaves a bill to be paid when he is even older. The Bears got great production out of Quinn but restructured his deal this season as well, and now the Bears will have the highest-paid duo on the edges in the NFL by a long shot.
1.Lack of draft capital
Last but certainly not least is the future. A new GM can eat bad cap hits for one season and move onto the next season with plenty of money cleared. However, Ryan Pace also unloaded plenty of draft picks that makes it even harder to get young players on cheap contracts.
Pace had a habit of trading up and never liked compensatory picks. This leaves the new GM with just five picks.
Even worse, three are on day three. The new GM will have two fifth round picks and a sixth rounder. He will then have a 2nd and 3rd, virtually the only two shots at making something of the roster.
Ryan Pace found the Bears a quarterback. All it cost him was draft picks, and cap space with no regard for the future.
Whoever the new GM is will have limited resources, and some skeletons in the closet to clean out during his first year before things can really turn around.