Bears GM Ryan Pace ready for work-from-home NFL Draft

At 43, Ryan Pace is closer in age to the Screen-time Generation than most NFL GMs. Like many Americans, he already has awkward work-from-home stories. Whether they end up being funny or disastrous depends on how the NFL’s virtual draft goes.

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Bears GM Ryan Pace is entering his seventh season.

Bears GM Ryan Pace is drafting at home by himself this week.

Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Bears general manager Ryan Pace has nine screens set up in the dining room of his Lake Bluff home, about five feet from his kitchen. Four computer monitors, two stacked on top of two, allow him to watch college video. There’s a tablet for his reports and another for the 100 or so video chats he has logged with potential picks for the NFL Draft, which starts Thursday night. Three more laptops clog his circular black wooden table. A television sits on a side table along the wall to his right.

None of them was any match for the vacuum cleaner.

Pace’s wife, Stephanie, hit Pace’s power cord while doing housework a few days ago.

“Every screen goes black,” Pace said Tuesday.

When Pace was stationed down in his basement earlier this month during the Bears’ draft prep, he could tell when his 10-year-old daughter, Cardyn, was on her iPad — his video chat with a prospect would lag.

The Bears’ IT department helped fix the problem, running a cord from his router down a flight of stairs and into the main-level dining room.

“So,” Pace said, “hopefully nobody trips over the cord or unplugs anything with the vacuum again. We should be in a good spot.”

At 43, Pace is closer in age to the Screen-time Generation than most GMs. But, like many Americans, he still has awkward work-from-home stories. Whether they end up being funny or disastrous depends on how the NFL’s virtual draft goes.

The world will find out during the first round Thursday. Because of social-distancing concerns in the wake of the coronavirus, all NFL officials are drafting from home. They cannot gather — each GM will be connected to his lieutenants, and to other teams, electronically.

Barring a dramatic trade, Pace won’t get to use that technology for the first time until Friday, when the Bears have two picks.

Since the NFL decided March 16 to cancel its Las Vegas extravaganza, teams have pushed the league to ensure a level playing field during the draft process, said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business and league events.

The NFL shut down all team facilities indefinitely and ruled everyone must draft from their homes. The NFL will place computer cameras on all GMs and coaches during the draft to make sure they stay put. For the times Pace is put on TV, his dining room features a lighting rig and a navy backdrop with the Bears’ logo and team sponsors emblazoned on it.

Last year, Pace test-drove the Bears’ sparkling new draft room, which doubled in size after the Halas Hall renovations and featured wall-length video boards wired into the team’s scouting database.

This year, he’ll stay in contact with his virtual war room — which includes coach Matt Nagy, player personnel director Josh Lucas, assistant personnel director Champ Kelly, college scouting director Mark Sadowski, football administration director Joey Laine, scouts and position coaches — from the dining room.

O’Reilly said the act of submitting a draft pick will be familiar. Via conference call, Microsoft Teams message or email, GMs will send their picks to NFL vice president of player personnel Ken Fiore at his home in Garden City, New York. Once Fiore confirms that the player is available, he’ll send the pick to commissioner Roger Goodell, who will announce the first-round selections from his Bronxville, New York, basement. 

The NFL has invited 58 prospects to train computer cameras on themselves during the draft. Each was mailed 32 caps, one from each team, to pick from when his name gets announced.

The NFL held a mock draft Monday to test technology. While there were reports of early glitches, Pace said it went smoothly. His work-from-home setup has, too — the Bears might even use some of the video-chat technology in the future.

“It’s been better and quicker and easier than I expected,” Pace said.

The draft won’t be the same as in previous years, though.

While Pace said the Bears haven’t scratched more players than usual from their draft list because of injuries, the lack of in-person meetings with medical staff will affect where players are selected.

With in-person offseason activities suspended indefinitely, the Bears will put a greater emphasis on a prospect’s football intelligence. They’ve had to glean that mostly from computer screens. After meeting with players at the Senior Bowl and NFL Scouting Combine, the Bears hosted only eight prospects at Halas Hall before the coronavirus shutdown.

They’ve checked in with teams about trades. Pace has direct lines to each GM on his dining-room phone.

With most pro days canceled, players who weren’t invited to the combine are at a disadvantage. And the scramble to sign college free agents after the draft will be more hair-on-fire than ever.

When the draft was held in Chicago, Dallas and Nashville, the NFL worried about the weather’s impact on its outdoor draft festival. This year, it’s watching weather reports in every NFL city, praying a power outage isn’t caused by a storm.

Or, you know, a vacuum cleaner.

“There will be a lot of fun stories to tell when this is all said and done,” Pace said.

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