Evaluating Pace

[dll2000]

Prior to this season most of us were giving Pace pretty good grades overall.  I mean the defense was stacked.   Historic.  And it did start out looking like that level before it broke down.  

IF MT had played slightly better than 2018.  IF Daniels made a natural jump in 2nd year in league.  IF Massie and Leno played as well as last year.  IF Whitehair played as well as last year.  IF Bears recognized in offseason that Long could no longer play.  IF Bears upgraded TE in offseason FA or draft like many of us expected.

That is a lot of 'IFs' but none of that is really too much to ask or out of bounds crazy speculation. That is reasonable expectation.  

Daniels was bloody 20 years old.  You would think he would be better at 21-22.  99% of people are.

Not really out of question to think Whitehair, Massie and Leno would maintain.  None are old or injured.  

MT SHOULD have been better in year 2 of same system.   Was it him or lack of protection that screwed with his brain?  

And the drops.  You can't blame Pace for the absurd amount of drops this year by guys who haven't had many in past.   

It is hard to blame Pace for above going into this year.   You can excuse it because logically you can't really expect that to happen. I mean MT may not be good, but he would be at least as good as last year right?   And probably a little better at his reads.    

I think the blame for Long and the TEs was extremely foreseeable though.  It was a topic of much discussion on this board.  A lot of us, including me, hoped Long would be better because he no offseason surgeries.  But it was just hope, I thought it was a total crap shoot.  Long was hot garbage as soon as they put pads on in Summer.  How you can not see that or address it I have no idea.    Then they let him start several games too.  Crazy.  That is crazy.  That is thinking with your heart and not your head.  

A lot of us, including me, hoped Shaheen would look like he looked in 2018 offseason, but thought it was crap shoot.  A lot of us did not have a lot of faith in Burton staying on the field.  How can you go into season with Shaheen, Burton and a converted OT as your main TEs?  Then make them large parts of run game?  

All that you can blame him and Nagy for on this disastrous season.  

[dll2000]

My personal evaluation of Nagy and Pace from listening to dozens of interviews and watching them is that they are very intelligent and inciteful men. 

A lot of 'stupid' stuff Nagy says publicly are things he has to say given his situation. A lot of stuff fans want him to say would completely torpedo the season and lose the team and he is smart enough to know that.  

That being said they both made very large mistakes that led to this situation. They were sooo close. But they left too big of holes and those mistakes can compound and feed on themselves like we see this season. It can make things that would not have been that bad really bad.  

I think if they had a 10 year deal they could probably produce a championship because they could learn from mistakes and evolve and get better together and create a program and system that works for them.

That being said that will never happen. That will likely never happen for anyone in Chicago.

My fear is that Pace will mortgage future to keep his job for a short term instead of making best decisions for team. 

So much of NFL is people who find themselves in a good situation not entirely of their making capitalize on it and hang on for a while. They are not better, smarter or more talented than others.  They just had that early success.  It's entirely possible Bellichick never gets another shot after Browns debacle and NFL history is completely different.

My larger point is I think the ultimate goal should be program building.  A top to bottom organizational LONG TERM program.  It is rare. Brown did it in 50s.  Lombardi did it in 60s. Steelers coach and owner did it together in 70s and actually kept it going after coach left. 49ers did it in 80s with Walsh and Debartlo or whatever his name was. JJ almost did it with Cowboys in 90s, but Jones wanted to be too big a part.  And Patriots Kraft let Belichick do it in a way that Jones didn't let JJ do it and it's still going. 

Are Pace and Nagy capable of that oven another chance and free reign? I don't know.   I think it's possible they could.  They aren't dumb by any stretch.  Would I give them that chance if I was owner? I don't really know. Maybe. Probably not, I have seen a few too many things I don't like.    But that is what you should work toward with a person you trust and believe in.  Even if he/they fail early. 

The coaching and GM carousel will always produce medicore to bad results. The Steelers and Patriots model seems so much better long term.

So that leads me to my controversial statement.  I would rather have Pace/Nagy stay for another 10 years and try to get better at building a program than have 3 new pair sets during that time. 

Like I said earlier that will never happen. They will feel job pressure and flail about like most do,  And Bears will fail and start over.  Again and again hoping for a perfect storm like '85 instead of building a program ever.  

[dll2000]

My biggest beef with Pace/Nagy and why I would not commit to them long term is how I saw them practice.

You have to identify and fix mistakes in practice.  That is what practice is for.  They just were pumping reps and mistakes were getting repeated again and again and again. 

Stop the drill/reps and go over it.  Why is the RG getting beat every single play? Pad level? Hand placement? Footwork? A combination?  Address it. Fix it!  If it can't be fixed after a time replace him.  

Why is the QB making wrong read again and again on this or that concept? Stop the drill.  Freeze it. Discuss it. Go slower if you need to.  Fix it!  

Well, we'll go over it in film they say.  Film should reinforce it.  Practice is more important.  If you wait until film while same mistake was made 10x you just wasted your entire practice and you have to repeat it next day to see if they learned from film.  If it's just one time, and the player self corrects next rep then fine.  No need to stop.  But when it's repeated ad nauseam then you need to address it. Right now! Don't just blow through it to keep to your schedule or amount of olays you want to get in.

They weren't addressing glaring problems invovling fundamentals and reads in practice and that is bad coaching.  Pagano was only one out there doing it that I saw. 

Oline coach and Nagy were just pumping reps.  Bad reps.  Don't get me wrong well scheduled reps are key to good coaching.  Thats why practices are so strictly scheduled by well coached teams.  Everybody does it now. 

But reps have to be efficient as well.  A million bad or incorrect reps are not helpful. The opposite.  That is difference between a good coach and a coach just copying a good coach schedule . 

I think Nagy is excellent at concepts. And probably classroom teaching. But on field coaching and practice management is very sub par to my eye. 

More importantly he isn't identifying and addressing glaring problems in practice.  You can't just hope things get better. Like he will be way better when healthy. Or when this guy comes back from injury it will fix this problem that keeps us from being able to succeed.  No.  You have to SEE it be better in practice with what you have now.  If you don't see it something has to change.  A player and/or the scheme.  It won't suddenly be better in a game.  

Edited November 21, 2019 by dll2000
Wrong word

[dll2000]

Forgot to add 'not' commit.  

Edited November 21, 2019 by dll2000

[BEAR FACE DOWN ARROW]

Great points, and they illustrate the difficulty in getting not only a good team, but a good team that can sustain itself through process and culture.  

I find Pace's misses incredibly frustrating, and while I still admire his swing for the fences approach when he has conviction, when it doesn't work the costs involved are damning. For as good a job as he's done on many of the behind the scenes parts of the organization, and his lower profile acquisitions, I could accept his misses if he had gotten QB right.  In hindsight, even if he had picked MT it would have been better not to trade for Mack and instead built the team a little slower, using the missing picks to address what are critical faults on the offense.

To people that rag on Nagy for his presser answers: what answers would you like to hear? There really is NO good way to talk to fans or media after a disastrous performance, you are essentially guaranteed to be ridiculed.  Frankly I think he does a pretty good job with that, and if I was on his team or in his building I would probably be a little proud of someone who consistently goes to bat for his guys and doesn't flinch when things are tough.  I do think he's overloaded trying to adapt his offense to players that can't perform it, and I think his stubbornness about that is not helping.

All that said,  I think it's very likely the team gets worse if either of those guys gets fired this year.  Better I think to give them a year to fix their mess, which would be incredibly impressive, and if not, you take the bad results and use them to clean house and with any luck the next bosses get a good draft pick and some very good leftover pieces on an incomplete team. 

[dll2000]

57 minutes ago, RunningVaccs said:

Great points, and they illustrate the difficulty in getting not only a good team, but a good team that can sustain itself through process and culture.  

Yes.  You have to build a program.  It's true at any level of football from little league through NFL.  Programs sustain success.  It is hardest to build in NFL, but people have shown it can be done.  You can win once in a while when everything comes together, but it is always just 1 year or maybe 2.  

I find Pace's misses incredibly frustrating, and while I still admire his swing for the fences approach when he has conviction, when it doesn't work the costs involved are damning. For as good a job as he's done on many of the behind the scenes parts of the organization, and his lower profile acquisitions, I could accept his misses if he had gotten QB right.  In hindsight, even if he had picked MT it would have been better not to trade for Mack and instead built the team a little slower, using the missing picks to address what are critical faults on the offense.

That's obviously the huge problem we are facing now.  He gambled on MT and then made move for Mack while MT was still unproven.  Essentially gambling on him twice.  In fairness we all loved it or vast majority of us did   But a gamble is just that.  A gamble.  Gamblers lose more than they win.  

To people that rag on Nagy for his presser answers: what answers would you like to hear? There really is NO good way to talk to fans or media after a disastrous performance, you are essentially guaranteed to be ridiculed.  Frankly I think he does a pretty good job with that, and if I was on his team or in his building I would probably be a little proud of someone who consistently goes to bat for his guys and doesn't flinch when things are tough. 

Exactly.  Nothing you say is right when you are losing.  Nothing.  There are only wrong things to say.  Unfair to criticize someone for their words in those situations.  I also thought Parkey was treated really unfairly after he missed kick. Nothing he did or said would have been right.  

I do think he's overloaded trying to adapt his offense to players that can't perform it, and I think his stubbornness about that is not helping.

Here is the thing though.  If you can't block the frontline guys, which the Bears can't do in 2019 almost nothing works.  There is no conventional NFL offense or scheme that works in the face of that.  Not at NFL level anyway.   Only way to overcome it is a quick thinking QB who is also playing out of his mind.  Brady and Belichik can play with bad O lines because they can excel at quick passing game - even though their O line coach is so amazing they never have a bad O line despite whoever they trot out there.  Bears obviously don't have that.  Mostly even good QBs will fail in that circumstance.  

Alternative if you don't have Brady/Belichick/Scarnecchia (seriously he is getting really old now and maybe he won't leave, but this is guy you should be targeting off Belichik staffs - not the coordinators) you have to do what Fox did.  You have to go double TE and a FB and shorten games while hoping for defensive miracles or special team touch downs.  That is what Nagy refuses to do for most part.  I don't really blame him, because that is playing not to lose instead of playing to win.   I'd personally rather lose by 40 than play 4 corners basketball at hope to win with a fluke at end. He wants to score points offensively.  

Other alternative is you go completely unconventional like the Ravens did and Panthers did with Cam or Denver did with Tebow.  You design an option QB attack and risk your QB on designed runs.  Nagy also refused to do that and can't now anyway because MT is too banged up and he has no one else who can.  

All that said,  I think it's very likely the team gets worse if either of those guys gets fired this year.  Better I think to give them a year to fix their mess, which would be incredibly impressive, and if not, you take the bad results and use them to clean house and with any luck the next bosses get a good draft pick and some very good leftover pieces on an incomplete team. 

I'm not sure if team would get better with a new guy calling shots or a new coach.  I think the O line coach has failed miserably and I also blame Nagy for that.  I do know is Bears will never have any kind of sustained success changing coaches and GMs every 4 years.  

 

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by dll2000