Why The Media Is (Once Again) Dead Wrong About Ryan Pace

Poor Ryan Pace. The guy really has created a lot of enemies in the mainstream media with his steadfast cloak and dagger approach. Granted he's nowhere near the President Trump levels but still. One would think he and the Chicago Bears front office might as well be the cast of Monty Python running through a skit rather than actual NFL business. This based on several of the reactions to their moves in recent weeks. Most of them centering around his "curious" decisions in the draft. Of the head honcho in that regard was the Mitch Trubisky bombshell. Nobody saw it coming. Maybe that's why people were so upset. More and more these days it feels like people would rather be proven right on a prediction than enjoy what a team is trying to accomplish in a draft. Pace was railroaded from so many different directions of late. It hasn't really let up since that day in late April.

Bears front office basically condemned for one move

Sean Wagner-McGough of CBS Sports recently did a power rankings of the best NFL front offices in the business. To the surprise of nobody he ranked the New England Patriots at the top. However, things started to really go off the rails when the 49ers were ranked second. Really? The team that just went 2-14 and now has a rookie GM with ZERO front office experience is suddenly the hottest thing going? That already chewed away some of the credibility for those rankings. So naturally it wasn't fun seeing the Bears ranked dead last at 32nd overall. Wow. Surely he had a good reason for this, right? Well that depends on the point of view. One could certainly argue it's rather weak. The fact that it's all based around one decision this offseason? That takes the crazy cake.

"It's a shame, the Bears were actually having a productive offseason before their decision to trade up one spot for the right to select Mitch Trubisky. But you can't ignore that trade. The Bears were swindled by the 49ers, essentially bidding against themselves. They also gave Mike Glennon way too much money. Nobody will care about the trade if Trubisky ends up being good, but the process matters, as our Will Brinson explained recently. And the Bears messed up the process."

My oh my. Where to start. First of all it's been proven at length by a number of different sources including Peter King of the MMQB and the Chicago Sun-Times that the 49ers and other teams were getting a lot of calls about trades up. At least one or two of those calls were involving Trubisky. The fact that the calls stopped after the Bears made their move pretty much confirmed that reality.

They got the top QB

That pretty much confirmed Trubisky was the consensus top quarterback for most teams. Reinforced by the fact that Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes, the next two taken, went #10 and #12 respectively. So that version of the argument is pretty torpedoed. The only thing left is the idea that the Bears got swindled by San Francisco, forcing them to give up way too much to move from #3 to #2. First of all everything is expensive when it involves a franchise quarterback. Especially these days. Second, they really didn't give up as much as these rankings imply. King broke down a similar trade made by the San Diego Chargers back in 1998, moving up from #3 to #2. Here's how the numbers broke down.

"Let’s calculate how much San Diego GM Bobby Beathard paid to move up to get Leaf, and how much Bears GM Ryan Pace paid to move up for Trubisky, using an estimate of the 16th pick in the fourth round to calculate the value of the 2018 pick for this year’s calculus. • Points Beathard paid to get in position to draft Leaf: 1,980. • Points Pace paid to get in position to draft Trubisky: 580."

They recouped the picks

This doesn't even take into account the trade Pace made later in the draft, moving down from #36 to #45 with Arizona in exchange for extra fourth and sixth rounders in 2017 and a fourth in 2018. That move mitigated much of the damage created by the Bears' earlier jump for Trubisky. Calculations estimate now that Chicago gave up the equivalent of a third round pick to get him. Just for quick reminding, here's a recap of every Bears third round pick over the past 10 years.

• Jonathan Bullard
• Hroniss Grasu
• Will Sutton
• Brandon Hardin
• Chris Conte
• Major Wright
• Jarron Gilbert
• Juaquin Iglesias
• Earl Bennett
• Marcus Harrison
• Garrett Wolfe
• Michael Okwo

Not exactly a who's who of Bears recent history. More like a who cares. It's just further justification that Pace was well within his right to make that move. Almost no expense can be spared to find a franchise quarterback. This team can recover from the loss of a third round pick. They can't recover from having no QB. Of course none of this is mentioned in the article. It looks and feels like a knee-jerk reaction built around a new hysteria where every draft pick must be treated like gold. People keep forgetting the hot mess Ryan Pace inherited when he took over. Nobody is crowning him the king of anything yet. However, maybe it's wise to do a little research before condemning him as some sort of village idiot.