ESPN future projections has the Bears ranked 31st in their Future Power Rankings
What do you guys think?
Posted Jul 20, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC
1839
Hating on the Bears gets them more clicks than being nice.
25
Is it really hating tho? The offense is a complete disaster. I don’t care how good your defense is, if you can’t score points, you’re irrelevant. This is modern day football, not that 80s/90s era. As long as that’s the case, a negative outlook of this team long term is warranted.
-7†
Our team is so terrible we finish 12-4 and 8-8 the last 2 years boo fucking hoo.
15
Again, it’s not a 2020 season power ranking. It’s about each teams future outlook...you know what nvm.
-8
I don’t think it’s dawned on this sub that if we don’t win and have Mitch play worthy of retaining in 2020 that we are facing a rebuild in 2021 with tons of money already on the cap and zero starting QBs on the roster.
4
I don't think we should be that low, but it's difficult to project a team favorably long-term without a clear answer at QB.
16
21, 31, does it matter? Unless the offense comes to life, the Bears will continue to be irrelevant.
11
I did a summary of the biggest misses from the last few years of these future power rankings, since ESPN does it annually:
https://twitter.com/ButkusStats/status/1285270542447149058?s=19
7
As long as we have no QBOTF we deserve to be pretty low on the long term futures index.
3
Honestly I’d rather the Bears to be ranked low than high. I’m tired of the only banners that get raised saying training camp league champs.
2
The article isn’t reflective of the 2020 season, just a outlook at our future after this upcoming season.
1
I bet the author put as much research and thought into his article like I did with this comment.
1
Let them hate, it’ll feel better when they’re proven wrong
0
It’s not really hating, its not reflective of the 2020 season. Just a peek at our future outlook, which doesn’t look good right now
3
This team always finds ways to disappoint me but there's absolutely no way barring injury that we end up bottom three.
0
This isn’t reflective on the 2020 season. It’s a power ranking of which teams are set for the future.
0†
Seth Walder is stupid for making his commentary all about Nick Foles. The Nick Foles contract isn't hamstringing the organization.
That being said, the ranking is pretty fair. If we're being honest with ourselves, the amount of rookie deal talent on the Bears roster is very low. We traded away draft picks for Trubisky, Mack, and Miller, and we haven't drafted particularly well with the picks we've had left. The result is a roster filled with, yes, good defensive players, but also with expensive aging veterans. We were already up against the cap this year and the cap crunch is going to be worse next year, on top the fact that our core defensive pieces (Mack, Quinn, Hicks, potentially Fuller) will be another year removed from their physical primes. We also don't have a promising long-term answer at quarterback, which automatically keeps us out of the top-half of the list.
In 2019, we were the 11th oldest team, and because we were so short on draft capital / impact draftees for the past few years, we're only getting older.
Think 3 years down the line. Is our 2023 quarterback on the roster? Almost certainly not. How many current Bears can you point to that you reasonably expect to still be playing for the Bears at a high level in 2023? Two? We're an aging roster teetering on the edge of cap hell. It's not fun, but it's true.
-4
Lol Foles is still insanely inexpensive all things considered, it's just that Newton signed for so cheaply that it's unfair to even compare him.
The Bears are probably in the middle of the pack in regards to these rankings, but ESPN knows that won't generate clicks so you'd be better served to just knock them down to the bottom and get your juicy ad revenue.
Lazy click-bait "journalism" at its finest.
I said this before, but it bears repeating:
Imagine the enormous shitstorm that would have enveloped the Bears' front office if they did not sign a QB before the draft, and didn't draft one either.
The only reason why Newton signed for as cheap as he did was because no one had signed him for four months. The Bears would not have gotten that same deal if they committed to him earlier.
I mean that's kind of what the Patriots did right? Waited 4 months before signing Newton. Of course Belichick has a lot more leeway than Pace to put his team in a position to go into the season with Jarrett Stidham as QB if Newton signed elsewhere.
The reason the Bears went the route they did (and I know you know this, just rehashing it for the umteenth time) is because they didn't want someone that would definitely have to replace Mitch. They wanted someone who was a big enough threat to push Mitch to succeed, and if he didn't have a competent QB that can take over instead of handing the reigns to Chase Daniel. It also helped that Foles' contract is somewhat harmless to get out of after 2020, and that Foles had familiarity with Nagy.
That narrows the options down to just Foles. I'm not saying I 100% approve of trading a 4th for Foles and his contract, but at least there is pretty good logic behind going the route they did and not waiting out Winston and Newton.
I really don't understand how our drafting and front office rank 32nd and 30th. Sure, Trubisky, White, and Shaheen were bad picks. But the Bears have drafted a lot of talent over the last few years. Over the past 5 years of drafts (2015-2019), Pace has ranked 14th among all 32 teams in drafted value versus expectation according to footballoutsiders. And his only draft below average in return vs capital was in 2015.
I'm not saying he should be top 10 or even top 15, but to put him at 32nd is just dumb. Especially since he is going to have a full slate of picks for the first time since 2018. Pace has had the 15th most draft capital of any team, and has drafted the 15th most return of any team. That seems about average to me.
And from a front office perspective, he has signed Hicks, Trevathan, Robinson, Quinn, and traded for Mack, while also accruing a comp pick in the past draft, as well as multiple comp picks for the 2021 draft. He missed on Burton and Glennon, but Glennon was a 1 year deal that had minimal impact beyond 2017.
Let alone coaching being at 22nd despite Nagy having a 20-12 record as a HC, and overall roster excluding the QB position being 20th despite how talented the defense is.
Ultimately, the Bears went 20-12 the past 2 seasons with the 14th oldest roster by snap-weighted age (not young, but also not necessarily old; #14-#19 all rank at 26.4 years old, which is the NFL average), and a full slate of draft picks in future years for a GM who has a history of being at least average in drafting.
It's really weird. I swear that the media has this Mandela Effect where they think the Bears went 3-13 last season.
I know that criticism is certainly valid for Pace, but I feel like a lot of the media's criticism is surface-level only. The Jimmy Graham signing is a perfect example of this: he's not meant to be the answer, he's meant to be a stop-gap that'll show up every Sunday and not force Nagy to play TE roulette every week.
Similarly with Foles he's going to either be the starter at a reasonable price or he'll be one of the best backups in the league for the next couple of years. That contract might be one of the most mutually beneficial ones in the league for both parties.
I'm in the same boat as you: not arguing that Pace is top 10, but he's also not bottom 10. He's a definitively average GM that can't quite nail down the QB spot. If he could find someone to properly lead the team then he's built a roster primed for a deep playoff run.
Yeah it's kinda crazy how the Bears are portrayed as a bottom tier team when they just went through the almost worst cast scenario season (QB and coaching could not have been worse, injuries to numerous defensive starters) and had a first place schedule, and still pulled out an 8-8. I know expectations were higher but there's only so much lower this team can go. We already saw the floor last season and it was league average.
It’s because that 8-8 year was projected to be the first of our peak. The last 2 years of Mitch on a rookie deal is our window. If we don’t pull it off in 2020 we are in rough shape. Without a top 1/2 of the league O it’s going to be a challenge.
They caught a lot of lucky breaks in their schedule last year. Even in some of their wins, the team looked absolutely awful. Sure they finished the season 8-8, but I feel like they were worse then their record indicated. They more of a 5-11/6-10 team. That’s what my eyes were telling me.
If you are average but for the QB spot and you bungle QB over many years you are actually bad on the whole.
QB is the most important part of the job, levels above the others. If you give any GM the ability to nail QB you effectively give 100% of the competent ones a team primed to make a deep run playoffs. Best QBs make the playoffs almost without regard to their GM, the best QBs with ok GMs are making run after run.
Some of that talent Pace has accumulated was the result of picks that could have been applied to QB. Drafting 1 QB in half a decade is bad GMing
You wouldn’t defend the Browns or Bills GM for acquiring talent and whiffing the QB would you?
Pace is certainly in the running for bottom 10 based on his results on the field.
How do you feel about this today?
Same. Nothing has changed to sway my opinion one way or another tbh.
Wow lmaoooooooooo
Wow imagine that I haven't been impressed with Cam, and the Saints are rolling with Hill over Jameis. The Bears still have a bunch of decent young talent on defense so I don't see how their future is anything worse than middle of the pack.
Sorry your attempt at a "gotcha" backfired but it's cool.