Remember all the complaints about the Bears as Ryan Pace’s tenure fizzled?
Not nearly enough “blue-chip” players across the board.
Major deficits at premium positions.
No certainty at quarterback.
Minimal depth.
Totally unsustainable salary-cap situation rife with killer contracts.
The Bears are in vastly better position as general manager Ryan Poles’ three-year rebuild reaches maturation. They still need upgrades next year to contend for a championship, but none of those criticisms apply to the roster Poles turned in at the deadline Tuesday. It is precisely what he promised when he took the job in 2022.
And it wasn’t the kind of promise Pace was making as he tried to convince everyone that their eyes were lying to them and the Bears weren’t really falling, but flying. Poles won’t need to sell anyone on this roster. You can see it for yourself.
The Bears have at least 10 legitimate Pro Bowl candidates, not counting any of the rookies or special teams players. It’s not out of the question that top-10 picks Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze, as well as rookie punter Tory Taylor and kicker Cairo Santos, could get there as well.
The Bears cut corners at some of the most important spots on any roster in Pace’s final season, but Poles has addressed many of those vital needs properly. He used the No. 1 overall pick on a quarterback everyone agreed was an elite prospect in Williams, he drafted cornerbacks Kyler Gordon and Tyrique Stevenson with second-round picks and spent big to keep Jaylon Johnson, and the Bears have one of the best wide receiver crews in the game with DJ Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze.
There’s more work for Poles to do at defensive end, where he has only Montez Sweat, and perhaps at left tackle, where Braxton Jones has a lot to prove, he has a first-round pick and two second-rounders next year.
Poles said in July this would be a difficult team to make, and he was right. It didn’t used to be.
There were seasons recently in which just about anybody had a shot at playing cornerback or wide receiver for the Bears. Offensive line jobs were there to take. There might as well have been a sign-up sheet at tight end.
No one can account for everything, especially in the volatile and violent world of football, but the current Bears even have good fallback options.
If a wide receiver misses time, Tyler Scott looks ready to step in.
Pace’s last team had Johnson and a cast of practice-squad-level players at cornerback, but now the Bears have three good starters and multiple quality backups. They have good reserves at safety, too.
The offensive line needs some upgrades, but there’s depth there as well.
All of that has come together without compromising the Bears’ future. There are no bad contracts on their books — none — and the team has the fifth-lowest dead-salary-cap money in the NFL. If this works, Poles will have the cap space to run it back next season, plus he has those three picks in the first two rounds of the draft.
Most importantly, this roster isn’t built around Mitch Trubisky or Justin Fields. The Bears are out of their everything-but-the-quarterback era.
Williams couldn’t possibly have arrived with better timing, and even Poles admitted he couldn’t have planned it this well. He caught some breaks as everything fell perfectly into place for Williams to climb aboard a ship ready to sail and open up that precious financial window of a quarterback’s rookie contract.
The Bears landed the 2023 No. 1 pick only when Lovie Smith’s Texans scored a touchdown and two-point conversion in the final minute of their season finale, and Poles had no clue when he flipped that pick to the Panthers for a haul that it would eventually produce the No. 1 pick this year, when a quarterback who reminds him of Patrick Mahomes was on the board.
Poles couldn’t have made any of that happen. To his credit, though, he was well positioned to take advantage of it. And he didn’t get too cute when the opportunity to draft Williams and Odunze arose. Sometimes the obvious moves are obvious for a reason.
It also says something about the way the Bears currently are being run that they navigated several setbacks to get here. General managers don’t have to be perfect. That’s impossible. But it’s an absolute requirement that they be deft problem solvers and come up with ways to correct errors. Nobody cares that the 49ers blew a wealth of draft capital on Trey Lance because they cleaned that up with Brock Purdy.
Poles started without a first-round pick, which would’ve been No. 5 that year, and had little choice but to unload future Hall of Famer Khalil Mack. He didn’t dig that hole for the Bears, but he had to climb out of it.
He made his own mistakes, too. Trading the No. 32 overall pick for Chase Claypool was highly regrettable. The Bears would be better off if they still had Roquan Smith, who has made All-Pro twice since Poles unloaded him. Poles indirectly acknowledged the team rushed its hire of former offensive coordinator Luke Getsy.
Yet none of those issues sunk the Bears.
It would’ve been hard to believe two years ago that Darnell Mooney’s production would drop off and the Bears would whiff on a big trade and still fix their wide receivers. Tremaine Edmunds isn’t Smith, but he’s arguably a better value. Poles asserted himself more in the offensive coordinator search this year, and it was far more thorough as nine candidates interviewed before they chose Shane Waldron.
That’s growth, not just for Poles, but for the organization.
Now it’s time for that to pay off. This roster isn’t Super Bowl-ready, but it should be a playoff team even if Williams hits the typical rookie turbulence. And the upside is that would be merely the starting point for what Poles aspires to assemble.