Chicago Bears: Ryan Pace proving doubters wrong with roster building
The hiring of the right coaches
When the Chicago Bears hired Pace, even they had concerns about his age and inexperience. They hired Pace but wanted a veteran coach who could help Pace. Of course, being a first-time general manager Pace agreed.
The two just couldn’t mesh, however. Pace is a young, new-school executive while Fox was an old-school coach. Their differing philosophies caused problems on the field. Jason La Canfora wrote about the conflict.
"It’s not a revelation that things are not great between young GM Ryan Pace and old-school head coach John Fox. I’ve been reporting and commenting on it since before last season."
After three losing seasons, the Bears fired Fox and gave Pace a shot at hiring his choice for head coach. He went out and hired Matt Nagy, the offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Nagy was a young coach who transformed the Chiefs offense. Quarterback Alex Smith had his best season under Nagy. He turned that season into a big contract. Pace hoped Nagy would do the same with second-year quarterback Mitch Trubisky.
Trubisky was one of Pace’s controversial pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. He moved up and gave up valuable draft picks to draft the youngster. Under Fox, Trubisky had a short leash. Fox ran a run-first offense and depended on the defense to win games. That philosophy doesn’t work well in the pass-happy NFL.
In addition to developing his players, Nagy has a knack for bonding with them. His is young and a former player himself so he understands them well. He gets those players to buy into his philosophy quickly and those players run through walls for him.
Nagy also takes full responsibility for his actions. In the preseason, he sat the starters in Week 3 when that is normally when they play extended time. The media crushed him for that, but he took to the podium after that game and fully explained his position and took every question, even when his handler tried to end the press conference. He also took responsibility for some of his trickery that didn’t work. That goes a long way to earning respect from players, media, fans and ownership.
Pace also hired Mark Helfrich to be the offensive coordinator. Helfrich had a similar pass-happy philosophy as Nagy and both worked to help Trubisky.
Another big hire was Harry Hiestand as the offensive line coach. You need to protect your quarterback in order for him to succeed. Hiestand succeeded everywhere he went, including his first stint with the Bears. Under Hiestand in 2018, the Bears had two Pro Bowl linemen, Charles Leno and Cody Whitehair.
While Trubisky still isn’t a finished product, he took a big step forward in 2018. You can see his stats below:
2017: 4-8 record, 59.4 completion percentage, 2,193 yards, 7 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 2.1 touchdown percentage, 77.5 passer rating.
2018: 11-3 record, 66.6 completion percentage, 24 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, 5.5 touchdown percentage, 95.4 passer rating.
Not bad for playing in his third offensive system in three years. With that season and another offseason under his belt, Trubsiky should only get better. By the way, Trubisky was also named to the Pro Bowl.
Pace not only hired the right coaches, but he also retained them as well. He convinced defensive coordinator Vic Fangio to stay. He developed the defense from a joke that allowed multiple 50-point games to arguably the most dominating defense in the league.
While Fangio departed Chicago to become the Denver Broncos head coach, Pace went out and got another good coach, Chuck Pagano. Pagano had success as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts as well as coaching the excellent Baltimore Ravens defense.
Pace has an excellent coaching staff in place that can develop the players and have them take even bigger steps than they took in 2018.