I’d be willing to bet everything I have, including my gas-mask collection, that there has never been a general manager who said after a draft: “We did not get better. In fact, if my hunch is right, this ship is going down soon.’’
So when Bears GM Ryan Pace declared that, “We got better,’’ after his trip to NFL’s meat locker was done, it didn’t carry a whole lot of meaning. He might end up being right, but for now, the safest thing to say is that the Bears got players at most of the areas that needed bolstering.
When your team has as many holes as this one does, especially on defense, you root for positions, not people. The Bears took a defensive end in the third round! Some guy from Florida! We need one of those! And they got an offensive lineman and a safety and …
The strangest thing is that no one (besides Pace) is absolutely sure the Bears got better by choosing Georgia outside linebacker Leonard Floyd with the ninth pick overall. He’s the kind of svelte, extremely athletic player who can make or ruin a general manager and quite possibly cause the rise and fall of nations. That sounds a little like a biblical prophesy, I know. I’m told it’s bigger than that – it’s the NFL.
I happen to believe Floyd’s speed and quickness to the quarterback is exactly what the Bears need to bolster a weak pass rush, but there are lots of voices screaming that Floyd is a very bad idea from a 6-10 team that can’t afford bad ideas.
The Bears did not choose a quarterback, which I consider a failure. No matter what you think of Jay Cutler, you can’t ignore the importance of a team being able to grow its own QB. The Bears might argue that there weren’t any quarterbacks they deemed worthy of choosing, but that’s the argument the franchise has used forever. You have to go back to Jim McMahon to find a quarterback that Chicago has been united behind. That is eons ago.
Pace says the Bears got better. He had better be right.
