Fire Pace

[McGowan]

Since we have a Fire Nagy thread, I think we should make one for the GM that should have been fired a year ago. 

The case for firing Ryan Pace:

1. Awful in the first round:

He had 4 top 10 picks and whiffed on three of them(White, Floyd, Trubisky) 

2. Failed trades: 

Pace has traded draft capital for the following players: Trubisky, Mack, Miller, Montgomery, Foles

All of the players he has traded for have been either inconsistent(Miller, Mack, Montgomery) or bad(Trubisky, Foles) 

3. Contract disputes with the Bears best players: 

The fact that he couldn't get extensions done with Fuller and Robinson is inexcusable. Transition tagging Fuller was bad, and he's looking to do that with Robinson again. 

4. Bad Free Agent signings

Quinn and Glennon are the huge ones, also McPhee couldn't stay healthy. 

5. Finally, he has no clue how to evaluate the QB position. 

How you could watch tape of Trubisky and Foles and choose them over other available QBs in the 2017 draft and  this year's FA is baffling. 

 

 

[BearFan PHX]

Im 50/50 on firing Pace, but you make a lot of good points.

[McGowan]

More reason to Fire Pace: 

https://www.radio.com/670thescore/sports/chicago-bears/allen-robinson-bears-trending-toward-breakup-after-2020

I think Robinson is heading toward the Transition Tag. 

['TD']

The offensive line is reason enough. I was against the hire from the start. 

[Alaskan Grizzly]

12 hours ago, McGowan said:

How you could watch tape of Trubisky and Foles and choose them over other available QBs in the 2017 draft and  this year's FA is baffling. 

To be fair and in my humble opinion, I think Foles could run the offense a lot better than Trubisky ever could, IF he had a line to block.  And I still think Foles can run the offense better than Nagy can call it. 

[McGowan]

On 11/11/2020 at 10:49 PM, 'TD' said:

The offensive line is reason enough. I was against the hire from the start. 

I was ok with Pace through the 2018 season. Last year I started to sour on him, and it has only become worse since then. 

[BearFan PHX]

The offensive line is a fire-able offense for Pace, but what we cant know is how much Nagy had sway over these decisions. You see how Pace did on Defense, and you wonder if Pace was serving his head offensive coach's offensive desires, or whether he is a meathead too.

 

[adam]

If you just picked BPA based on a collective ranking of prospects, your team would be pretty damn good. Pace falls in love with things that don't win football games. 

There are several reasons why Pace should be gone.

1. Failed to get a franchise QB: paid Glennon, drafted Mitch, signed Foles, all have failed. 
2. Never addressed O-Line (Paid Quinn instead of addressing O-Line in free agency)
3. TE Position was a black hole for years. (Dion Sims, Adam Shaheen, and now Kmet doing very little)
4. Our best players on offense and defense were not drafted by the Bears (ARob and Mack). This makes them very expensive and not sustainable.

He also got a free pass for Fox's Bears but should be accountable for those years too. 

[BearFan2000]

When Pace was first brought in it felt like a breath of fresh air (though often rebuilds can feel that way initially).   With Pace came Fox, and Vic Fangio.  The 2014 Bears were an absolute mess, the once proud D was atrociously bad, Trestman had completely lost the team and it was a toxic locker room.  So I do credit Pace for turning that situation around.  We now have a solid to great D, but sadly we never seem to pair a good D with even an average offense.  The culture changed for the better.  In comes Nagy and 2018 was a promising year that ended in disappointment, and disappointment became 2019's theme and that has continued into this year.  

A lot of our issues on offense can be traced back to the line.  We have not invested capitol into building a decent offensive line.  Everything starts in the trenches and the only thing our offense does consistently is lose the battle for the line of scrimmage.  We rarely give our QB enough time to throw, we rarely open holes or if we do open a hole it's not open long enough.  We've watch draft after draft where we have passed on OL talent that would help us build a line that could allow our backs to have room to run, and our QB's to stop running for their lives.  It makes it hard to truly evaluate the QB's and RB's. When neither trust they will get protection or holes will be where they are supposed to be it creates hesitation, indecision, and throws your timing off.  Both Trubisky and Foles have looked bad at QB except in 4th quarters when teams are playing soft prevent.  I believe both are better than what we've seen from them but neither is anything close to a franchise QB.  Monty has underwhelmed but it's hard to evaluate how much of the rung game woes are on him.  He does tend to get happy feet and try to jump/stutter, but he's also usually facing defenders in the backfield.  The whole offense is a dumpster fire.  If I'm Robinson, I might be glad I didn't get an extension his talent is being wasted here.  

It's getting to the point where Pace and Nagy might be fighting for their jobs. As they should be.  5 seasons into Pace's tenure, two coaches, and what have we got to show for it?  Double doinked our way out of the playoffs in 18, and a fools gold record to start this year which is quickly heading towards at best an 8-8 season with again no playoffs.  

If we do fire Pace, I feel you need to do the wholsale house cleaning.  An incoming GM would need to at least have the option to hire his own coaches and staff.  it hurts your search for GM to say you have to keep this coach or that coach.  The thing I'd be most concerned about in a transition would be the Defense because it's playing at a contender level.  The offense you can blow it all up for all I care it's not functioning at any level.  I doubt it happens during season.  If it did you could make Pagano interim HC make one of his assistants the interim DC, and have Lazer play out the rest of the year as OC.  

I really hate that 5 years later we're again talking about another rebuild rather than enjoying an ascending team with SB aspirations.  Tired of this vicious cycle that we never seem to be free of.

[BearFan PHX]

True. The one good thing that Pace has done is to put our defense into a Parcells mode, with Parcells tree guys. At the very least that means if you bring in another Parcells guy, you dont need to redo your defensive tackles etc.

As for the offense, I think Nagy put a premium on light mobile offensive lineman - they can pull and do all the fancy T formation stuff he likes, but at what cost? They cant open a hole, they dont hold pass blocks, and apparently they dont even know who their assignment is.

We've had two of the best OL coaches in the game and Charles Leno still doesnt know who to hit.

And therefore Pace doesnt know who to draft, or Nagy is hamstringing his choices.

Bring in the next guy but make him also a Parcells tree guy, and we will be OK. Coach or Coach AND GM, as long as they play a 3-4 and have the Parcells philosophies in players, we can keep some of the cultural gains.

[Mongo3451]

Here's what I'm looking forward to tonight.  In reference to NYC and 2K's posts, we are going top get another piece of the puzzle tonight.  With Nagy going bizarro world with formations and personnel, the OL and skill players stay out of sync.  Lazor seems to be the opposite of Nagy.  He likes to use what works and make a defense defend it.  He also likes multiple plays out of the same formation.  What do you get when you use a lot of offensive formations?  A = that many more defensive formations.  Lazor will simplify the formations and keep the defense honest with misdirection out of the same formations.  It's all out of Nagy's playbook, but he won't come out with random and bizarre plays that Nagy does.  I look for the team to have some sort of theme and rhythm tonight.  All while being less predictable.

[BearFan PHX]

1 hour ago, Mongo3451 said:

Here's what I'm looking forward to tonight.  In reference to NYC and 2K's posts, we are going top get another piece of the puzzle tonight.  With Nagy going bizarro world with formations and personnel, the OL and skill players stay out of sync.  Lazor seems to be the opposite of Nagy.  He likes to use what works and make a defense defend it.  He also likes multiple plays out of the same formation.  What do you get when you use a lot of offensive formations?  A = that many more defensive formations.  Lazor will simplify the formations and keep the defense honest with misdirection out of the same formations.  It's all out of Nagy's playbook, but he won't come out with random and bizarre plays that Nagy does.  I look for the team to have some sort of theme and rhythm tonight.  All while being less predictable.

good point - you dont win with trickery alone - at some point you just have to block the person in front of you. and when Pros do that, they average 3 yards a carry. You work to get that to 4 or 5, but any professional team ought to be able to get 3, and we dont.

[Bertva]

Nagy has to go also, his offense is soft. He came in and took what Fox was putting together and went to the playoffs. Then Pace and him started making cuts and brought in players for his offense and we see what we have now.

Jordan Howard and Montgomery wonder what combo could have been?

[Alaskan Grizzly]

2 hours ago, Bertva said:

Nagy has to go also, his offense is soft. He came in and took what Fox was putting together and went to the playoffs. Then Pace and him started making cuts and brought in players for his offense and we see what we have now.

Jordan Howard and Montgomery wonder what combo could have been?

Well said!  

[BearFan PHX]

Howard was cut today, so you can have him if you really want him.

[DABEARSDABOMB]

10 hours ago, BearFan NYC said:

good point - you dont win with trickery alone - at some point you just have to block the person in front of you. and when Pros do that, they average 3 yards a carry. You work to get that to 4 or 5, but any professional team ought to be able to get 3, and we dont.

I think you brought up some interesting thoughts Re: Pace and how much of his offensive failures are on Nagy, etc. 

The hard part I have with Pace is, yeah, he missed on Trubisky - we all know it and there are some other misses (including spending the money on Quinn vs. focusing on the oline).  But he has drafted Whitehair and Daniels (Both higher end investments) + signed Massie via free agency and given extensions to guys like Long. So he has invested in the position but offensively he has definitely had a number of misses and you can't ignore this oline hasn't been good - but how much is just a bad scheme fit where Nagy doesn't even know what to do. . 

But on the defensive side of the ball - he has had some massive hits (don't get me wrong - he's had his misses; Floyd never ended up becoming the edge rusher we had hoped, but he was always an underrated linebacker and is having a great season in LA this year) and ultimately has built a pretty darn good defense.  And despite Kmet not emerging (at least not yet - also no TE has really done anything this year), this years draft still looks pretty good.  He also invested much needed money into facilities and had clout and vision to do that and in my opinion has been pretty honest when it came to admitting his mistakes (was not shy to cut his guys).  

His record - obviously poor - but he inherited about as crappy of a set-up as possible and instilled Fox, whos shifted the culture and Nagy, who as a HC has done a decent job with culture, etc.  He just is a complete turd offensively (I'm sure he has things he's good at - just not owning the whole thing when it comes to offense design).  I actually seriously wonder - how much of the offensive failure is on Pace (including some of his higher profile misses like Dion Simms, or Jimmy Graham (too much money - clearly was a need) or even on the oline (never quite figuring it out - they've used finesse guys after Fox had built a power running scheme - but the finesse scheme/oline thing was very much a Nagy concept...probably too focused on getting cute vs. reality).  

I really wonder - how much did Pace fail because Nagy really didn't know what he want / wasn't able to really provide effective clarity around what he needed. GM's job is to trust coach to some extent and work with them on desired scheme, etc.  I think Monty was a guy Nagy wanted and Nagy has always raved about him.  I am probably grasping at straws - I just really hate having to completely start over again because I think Pace has some good qualities. To be frank - Nagy does too - but running an offense isn't one of them and well that is a damning failure.  Will be really interesting to see what this team does after the bye week.  I legit think they need a spark and maybe Mitch can do that. I do think the offense has always liked him and you've seen guys like Cohen almost hint that they need Mitch back (and we know Zach Miller has been saying for weeks more Mitch).  

Reality is nothing is saving this offense - it just sucks.  I legit don't understand why as a Bears fan I've literally never been able to see any offense. I literally can think of one years a kid with Curtis Conway and Jeff Graham, who put it all together for 1 season and than there was a year with Cutler and Martz where the offense was clicking right before Jay hurt himself tackling someone in a blowout win against the Chargers (huge win - followed up by the Caleb Hanie experience).  You had the Trestman era where the offensive talent was legit (Marty B, Alshon, BMarshall) but personalities were insane and Trestman couldn't handle it...but that is basically it.  Outside of that - pure & utter crap.