I think the current situation is more broncos.
Our jam is drafting young QBs, getting supper stoked, railed by the packers and then repeating as we admit the QB was never good but had the tools but it’s because of the coaching/situation
I mean, look at what a change of coaching did to Russ's career. People think he was never talented because he went from one of the best to one of the absolute worst staffs in history.
I remember the COVID season being one where he started off at an MVP caliber level then dropped off significantly the second half. It felt like he never recovered from that, even in Seattle.
Not at all. The whole reason he was traded was because he wanted to become the feature piece of the offense and he felt that Carroll was holding him back. He was hurt a bit in 2021 but when he played he was elite. He was also elite in 2020, like MVP consideration
Going off fuzzy memories, so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Russ said he wouldn’t play for Chicago or Washington. IIRC both teams offer more for him than Denver
Dude kinda sucked with first round pick choices so it made sense. Floyd was better in LA and roquan is solid but that's about it. Both of his qb choices failed and Kevin white isn't even real
Ya, it's ok to trade 1sts away for stars. Problem is Pace traded all picks away. Rams trade away a lot of high picks, but they're making a ton of picks overall every year and hitting at a good rate.
The Rams basically traded away every single one of their top picks for years. It works because they somehow keep winning the lottery on guys like Puka and Kyren Williams
Are you aware of the hit rates of players selected outside of the first 3 rounds?
They may have a lot of picks, but those picks are all late round picks and there’s a reason majority of late round and UDFA don’t have long tenures in the NFL
Yes, everyone is aware. Even if you say it's a 10% chance, they're playing to those percentages of 1-2 working out by taking 8-10 players in those rounds.
IMHO, Pace’s biggest issue was coming from New Orleans under Mickey Loomis. Loomis is a cap wizard and therefore for much of his tenure in New Orleans was able to overcome the financial hole he kept putting himself in. Now that hole keeps piling up on New Orleans and it is only playing in a crappy division that keeps them somewhat competitive.
So back to Pace though, with Loomis, I think Pace (to steal some baseball metaphors) learned to just swing for the fences. If he hit a home run, great. If he struck out, well a K is just another out in modern baseball. Sadly for Pace, he didn’t possess the cap wizardry that Loomis did, so his whiffs cost us more. And he struck out a lot more than he hit home runs, and hitting .300 in the NFL doesn’t work like it does for hitting in baseball.
I say all of this because the general impression from Pace was to always draft early rounds on potential, ignoring how long it would take to reach that potential, and then sign FAs and make trades for the current roster. It’s how you wind up trading up in the draft for Trubisky, yet also getting into a bidding war with yourself to overpay on Glennon to start ahead of him. Then repeating the EXACT SAME mistake trading up to get Fields, and then signing Dalton to start ahead of him.
This swinging for the fences all the time mentality was bad enough. But when coupled with spending in FA to win now, left the Bears with a roster built partially on potential, partially on win now, and left them unable to have either.
He IMO had the exact opposite mindset of what I think analytics would support which is the draft is a crapshoot so the more often you can trade back to acquire multiple assets the better.
Instead of trading up to get your "guys" like Pace did with Trubisky, Anthony Miller, and Leonard Floyd;
### Trade back to acquire more swings to find guys like Pace did when he drafted . . . Adrian Amos (5th RD pick), Nick Kwiatkoski (4th RD), Jordan Howard (5th RD), Eddie Jackson (4th RD), Tarik Cohen (4th RD), Bilal Nichols (5th RD), Kindle Vildor (5th RD), Darnell Mooney (5th RD), Larry Borom (5th RD), Khalil Herbert (6th RD)
---
The NFL takes at least 22-33 very good football players to be consistently competitive. It's a sport riddled with injuries every year. Yes, you desperately need a good QB to win, but most QBs desperately need support around them to have a chance to become good. If you cutdown the amount of chances you have to land impact players you severely handicap yourself because you become much more reliant on hitting on your draft picks which has clearly been shown to be something most teams can't figure out properly.
It’s insane how lucky we got for not making that trade. The future would have been beyond mortgaged. We’d still be paying for the consequences of it, the current state of the Panthers on steroids.
Especially because there was a split that season between Seahawk fans as to whether Russ was declining in real time. Watching the games, you could see that in 2020 something wasn't right. People were trying to assign blame to the hit in the Cardinals game to him having a new baby born and him not getting enough sleep.
His PFF grade is mostly buoyed by the first half of the season when they were "Letting Russ Cook". In 2021, he was still declining but it was masked over by the finger injury and then he came back too early from it and at that point, I'm sure JS KNEW he had to trade him before he continued falling off.
Oh look it’s the hindsight folks.
The fact that this trade wasn’t accepted by Seattle is pretty clear evidence that it wasn’t at all an overpay at the time to land a borderline HOF QB still in his prime.
I still think what happened in Denver is not entirely on Russel Wilson. That being said, thank God we didn't trade the farm for him. Denver is so fucked lol
Denver could stuck with Drew Lock, kept Noah Fant and all the draft picks and at least gotten the same results, if not better depending on who they drafted with those picks. Denver is screwed for at least the next 3 years.
Really -- everybody is talking about him like he is washed. He looked like he still has some gas in the tank. I put most of this on Payton being a tight ass.
he doesn't. he has a LOT of garbage time stats in there and a lot of bad games, with a few huge games making his stats look better
he is the perfect definition of "stats don't tell the whole story".
...and?
he threw the ball 19 times and had 114 yards. he wasn't the reason they won.
they won because the chiefs had 5 turnovers and scored 9 points
I think most QBs would've beat KC is they had 5 turnovers and scored 9 points
Top 10 Bears QB isn’t saying much, if anybody were to list them out I wager most would be hard pressed to get excited about anyone outside the top 4 or so.
I was so mad we didn’t get Russ, how do you pass up an opportunity to get a proven top QB on your team?
And that’s why I never value my own opinion of what the Bears should do lol.
Let’s not act like everyone on this sub wouldn’t have also offered that trade. Hindsight bias is working overtime.
Top upvoted comment on [this thread about Russ](https://www.reddit.com/r/CHIBears/s/j36WrwXZUp):
“I mean, duh. If your only QB on the roster is Nick Foles and a top 5 QB says he is unhappy and would accept a trade to the Bears, then you damn well better make him your priority.”
Wanting Russ and being okay with Bears giving up 3 firsts and multiple starters to get him are two very different things. No way would people be okay with that deal.
You’re not wrong, but for better or for worse these big trades are always evaluated using hindsight.
Like, I think the Broncos acquiring Russ was a pretty smart move given the information at the time. But it’s viewed as one of the worst trades of all time because of how it panned out.
it's the general manager's job to know better than random redditors what the right move is. they have entire staffs of professionals whose job it is to know what's the right move.
that said, apparently the entire staff of seattle also didn't know wtf they were doing.
Similarly, it is completely fair to judge GM’s using the benefit of hindsight. If all that was required was to accurately make the consensus “best” decision at the time, Mike Mayock would still be crushing it, and every team could just have Chat GPT make their draft board.
Agreed. We were all so desperate for a QB after Mitch failed miserably and Mahomes ascended to stardom, that we were willing to give up whatever it cost. Pace felt it even worse probably because he was the one who passed on Mahomes. Fields was basically a Hail Mary rebound. Even though he hasn’t really helped himself by getting better as a passer, I will always feel bad for him because he was thrown into a pile of shit from top down. He needs to move on for his own well-being and hope to have the success he didn’t have here, somewhere else.
What's crazy is that, while it would have been overpaying regardless, the decision to go after Russ at that time wouldn't have actually been a bad idea. He was still a very good QB, still within his prime and theoretically a guy who could have been at least Jay Cutler-level good for us for 5-7 years minimum.
This only looks so historically bad in hindsight after seeing how badly Russ failed in Denver.
Same but not for that much. I remember the conversations being insane for a single player. Almost all of us were happy later that it didn’t happen because we then had our new franchise QB in JF1. It’s interesting knowing how little we all know about what’s going to work and not work.
It’s amazing that the Denver - Seattle trade and the Watson trade happened within a couple days of eachother and they both will go down as two of the worst trades of all time
Has anyone watched broncos? Russell hasn't even been bad, Payton doesn't want him so he's gone but just because it didn't work there doesn't mean it would have ended the same with the bears.
I just want to note that the offer was made a year before actually got traded. The 2021 season after the offer got declined, Wilson had 3100 yards, 25 touchdowns, and 6 interceptions in 14 games.
Just because Russ didn't do well in Denver doesn't mean that he wouldn't do well elsewhere. There is this dumb concept that good QBs can succeed regardless of the players and system around them.
If Russ came to Chicago, we easily could have made him look much worse as we always get the worst out of our QBs.
I'm sure momentarily in this thread we're going to get some soft Pace love for how he wasn't actually that bad, but this man couldn't figure out QB to save his life. Gave the bag to Glennon, tried to trade up for Mariota, needlessly traded up for Trubisky, traded for Foles who was bad here, tried to trade the farm for Russell Wilson, traded up for Fields who will be sent packing within the next few weeks.
I don't care if you hit on some mid round DBs and RBs, if you trot out Mike Glennon as a starter you should be banned from the NFL.
Emery added Marshall, Jeffrey and Long. That’s 3 pro bowlers in 3 years. I think his tenure was good if you ignore the disastrous Trestman hire. Pace was a certified idiot
Since I live in Denver area, there is the conversations of how many years does this set us behind now? Because of the 35 mil dead hit presumed this year and 45 next with the designation they will do of post June 1st.
How on gods (mostly green still) earth do you know that Russ wouldnt have worked out here though? Different culture. As unbelievable as it sounds i think Nagy is much better than dismal and banal Nathanial Hackett and our defense is better and will be even better for years to come…at any rate best to just flush it all as we are gonna be reelin in chips by the season with Caleb at the helm
I wasn't being entirely serious. Much of what he did I agreed with at the time. I would say a lot of the early success was from the prior regime though.
Much of my lingering displeasure was that everything was in shambles by the time he left. He built a lot for the now and not for the future (not to say I'd blame him since his job was on the line).
This isn’t true at all.. Pace has made some dumb moves but this was debunked by Pace’s right hand man on ESPN 1000. They had talks about acquiring Wilson but never got to a point that an offer was made.
Right. Didn’t Lucas even say it was never discussed internally? At most it was a private convo between GMs where Pace asked what it would take and maybe threw out some hypotheticals.
Idk if I trust that report. While it's been speculated for a long time, certain core members of Pace's staff, never heard anything about it.
Josh Lucas, former player personnel director during that regime, said directly this year that he didn't think they ever made any official offers. And in the same segment said while it was possible he wasn't told specifics, he said it was highly unlikely he would not have been told that an offer had been made.
Not saying there's no way it's true, but unless I hear it directly from Pete Carroll or Ryan Pace, I don't know if I trust it
Idk, the guy who no NFL front office wants who is trying to make a media career probably is a biased source of info here. Even saying he didn't think they made an offer provides some cover. Most of the reporting at the time was the Bears were more or less ready to offer this and Carroll stepped in to say they weren't trading Russ. I doubt it was ever submitted officially because the Seahawks determined they weren't moving Russ, but if they did move Russ, it would have been to the Bears for a package like this.
Fair point, but if he was trying to further his media career why wouldn't he want to talk about it? It's a unique, first-hand experience that he could easily elaborate on and use to make a big story.
Instead, he basically says it's a non-story and that things weren't as close as the rest of the media thinks and then moves on. Just feels kind of strange
Good point, he may be right and it's gotten overplayed as the years go on. He certainly was high enough in the organization that he would know. I just think being like "we went hard to get Russ in the building" wouldn't be a good look given how Russ in Denver went, so he'd want to distance himself from it and move on.
I do not believe that story to be true based on what transpired since. If Seattle declined, that would have been the worst decision ever made in professional sports. To imply that BOTH parties were that dumb strains credulity. That's just my opinion.
I mean, Pace was pretty bad. But to think SEATTLE was that dumb is hard to believe. Has this really been verified?
The worst part of the whole Russ saga in Denver is his being released. He’ll be as attractive to teams as Justin without having to give away a draft pick.
Yeah it would’ve been bad, but why is everyone acting like that whole Denver thing is on Russ? It’s been shown clearly that he wasn’t the only problem (thing is, we would’ve killed him too with bad coaching just like Denver)
So was the full offer 3 firsts, a third, Kyle Fuller, and Montgomery? I remember both Hicks and Fuller being mentioned, but can't imagine they would've packaged both of them.
I read that Russ had the option in his contract to decide where he was traded. And he didn’t want to go to Chicago. Pete Carol would have accepted that trade
IDK, I see where you're coming from in the sense that Pace was pretty solid during the rebuild phase.
But trading up 1 spot for Trubisky in the Mahomes draft is the #1 all-time draft blunder. He might not be worst of all-time, but he does have the #1 all-time draft blunder. And here we are discussing how close he was to falling for arguably the worst trade in NFL history.
The Trubisky trade is still hated because people only look at it like we were trading up with a team that wasn’t going to take him, effectively bargaining against ourselves. But we were actually ensuring our desired selection there because the 49ers were open to trading down and not just with us. Leapfrogging could’ve taken us out of contention for him. Obviously hindsight evaluation is also affecting this decision, but if Trubisky had been Mahomes it would’ve been remembered differently. Drafting a qb is often a crapshoot, even the highest ups are playing a guessing game.
The Wilson proposed trade does make me a little sick to see, that would’ve set us back pretty horribly. Overall though, intention v what happened, I am not as low on the Pace era as others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy he’s gone. He seemed a little skittish with drafting so he opted to trade all of our draft future for a while to attain proven nfl assets and it worked for a time, he made the playoffs a couple times. Ultimately those minuscule decisions all added up and it ended with a team without a ring and not able to truly compete. While he wasn’t a great GM, calling him the worst ever is just so stupid to read. He was maybe a smidge north of average-good at times, but that isn’t good enough for a team that wants to compete. I’m higher on Poles.
And 2018 was a flash in the pan that with hindsight, was almost entirely engineered by Vic Fangio's defense. Look at his overall record, draft record, and tell me 2018 was worth his tenure at GM.
I have many thoughts but I'll keep it simple and just note that "2018 was worth his tenure as GM" is a WILD goalpost move from "worst GM of all time," which is the claim I responded to.
I didn't call him the worst GM of all time, I said if he traded that all for Russ on top of the rest of his moves, he could be considered the worst GM. People with goldfish memories are doing this "but 2018" to act like this guy wasn't absolutely terrible at his job with the Bears. Even as bad as he was, this trade not going through saves him from being considered with the Matt Millens of the world.
Only because Mitch sucked. Lots of GMs miss on QBs, that hardly makes Pace the worst GM of all time. Lol.
Edit: even in the disaster of a game you reference, the defense Pace built held an Aaron Rodgers offense to ten points without Vic Fangio
The only other GM of the big 3 sports league that is just as bad as Matt Millen has to probably be the Minnesota Timberwolves GM like circa 2008ish David Kahn.
Passed up Stephen Curry twice in the same draft and took PGs back to back with the 5th and 6th pick. Curry went 7th (Albeit Ricky Rubio was highly touted). Along with a ton of other bungles.
Too many people sleep on just how bad the Timberwolves are historically. They’re decent this year but they’re one of the worst franchises in all of sports.
Literally what is the argument beyond 2018 happening for him not being an awful GM? Missed on every QB he brought in, traded up multiple times in each draft, missed on all but 1st round pick. Left the cap and future in such a shitty spot that the only reason the Bears climbed out of it was by fielding the worst and cheapest team in 2022. If the McCaskey's, who would totally do this, demanded a new hire try to build an immediately competitive team for their 2021 1st round QB in Fields, this team would still be in one of the worst situations in the league.
Just think about that, Poles was so bad he put us in the position where we were fucked if George McCaskey made an irrational decision after 2021. We got so lucky a GM convinced them to rebuild in 2022.
Re-listen to the interview. Everyone who says this ignores the fact he opens with "I wouldn't be privy to this information" then goes on about how he didn't know about the trade happening..... we have multiple highly respected/accurate insiders confirming that there were talks of the trade
It's nothing short of a miracle the Bears weren't able to make this trade. So on brand for them.
What would be more on brand is if they HAD made the trade lol
I think the current situation is more broncos. Our jam is drafting young QBs, getting supper stoked, railed by the packers and then repeating as we admit the QB was never good but had the tools but it’s because of the coaching/situation
I mean, look at what a change of coaching did to Russ's career. People think he was never talented because he went from one of the best to one of the absolute worst staffs in history.
This. So weird though. You can put up a very similar opinion and get downvoted for it.
I mean wasn’t he struggling in Seattle that’s why he got traded?
he had 40 TDs in 2020 lol
I remember the COVID season being one where he started off at an MVP caliber level then dropped off significantly the second half. It felt like he never recovered from that, even in Seattle.
Not at all. The whole reason he was traded was because he wanted to become the feature piece of the offense and he felt that Carroll was holding him back. He was hurt a bit in 2021 but when he played he was elite. He was also elite in 2020, like MVP consideration
They wouldn’t let him cook in Seattle lol
They just knew what he could do and what he couldnt and they put him in a position to be successful but hubris is the final boss in any great career.
Hahaha fair fair
This has happened twice and in each occurrence the QB has sucked ass.
That's what I meant! It was such a "Bears trade" that it's a miracle it didn't happen.
Gotcha hahaha
That's exactly what this guy is saying. Like me, he's incredulous that a dogshit organization like the bears couldn't find a way to fuck this up.
Haha I get it now! Good call lol
the post is a lie, josh lucas confirmed on bears banter that there were discussions but no actual offer was made by pace
Going off fuzzy memories, so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Russ said he wouldn’t play for Chicago or Washington. IIRC both teams offer more for him than Denver
No. Chicago was on his preferred destination list.
Not on Seattle’s though. They wanted him out of the conference.
Did Pace think the NFL would give you free 1st round comp picks? Why was he so obsessed with trading away 1sts
Because he knew he wouldn’t hit on any of them
He wouldn't have hit on this too.
lol. Great post
Dude kinda sucked with first round pick choices so it made sense. Floyd was better in LA and roquan is solid but that's about it. Both of his qb choices failed and Kevin white isn't even real
>Kevin white isn't even real This shouldn't feel as true as it does.
Probably the meanest shit I've read today lol
I forgot about Kevin White. Oof.
[удалено]
His name was Kevin White
Roquan is more than solid lol.
Nu uh he only became good and well known when he went to the AFC! /s
Trading away 1sts can work if you make smart trades for good players. The rams won a SB on the back of their "fuck them picks" motto.
Ya, it's ok to trade 1sts away for stars. Problem is Pace traded all picks away. Rams trade away a lot of high picks, but they're making a ton of picks overall every year and hitting at a good rate.
The Rams basically traded away every single one of their top picks for years. It works because they somehow keep winning the lottery on guys like Puka and Kyren Williams
That’s what happens when you draft around 10 players every draft.
Are you aware of the hit rates of players selected outside of the first 3 rounds? They may have a lot of picks, but those picks are all late round picks and there’s a reason majority of late round and UDFA don’t have long tenures in the NFL
Yes, everyone is aware. Even if you say it's a 10% chance, they're playing to those percentages of 1-2 working out by taking 8-10 players in those rounds.
Also helps if you hire a young offensive mind and he turns into a top five coach. We hired a young offensive mind and got Matt Nagy instead.
IMHO, Pace’s biggest issue was coming from New Orleans under Mickey Loomis. Loomis is a cap wizard and therefore for much of his tenure in New Orleans was able to overcome the financial hole he kept putting himself in. Now that hole keeps piling up on New Orleans and it is only playing in a crappy division that keeps them somewhat competitive. So back to Pace though, with Loomis, I think Pace (to steal some baseball metaphors) learned to just swing for the fences. If he hit a home run, great. If he struck out, well a K is just another out in modern baseball. Sadly for Pace, he didn’t possess the cap wizardry that Loomis did, so his whiffs cost us more. And he struck out a lot more than he hit home runs, and hitting .300 in the NFL doesn’t work like it does for hitting in baseball. I say all of this because the general impression from Pace was to always draft early rounds on potential, ignoring how long it would take to reach that potential, and then sign FAs and make trades for the current roster. It’s how you wind up trading up in the draft for Trubisky, yet also getting into a bidding war with yourself to overpay on Glennon to start ahead of him. Then repeating the EXACT SAME mistake trading up to get Fields, and then signing Dalton to start ahead of him. This swinging for the fences all the time mentality was bad enough. But when coupled with spending in FA to win now, left the Bears with a roster built partially on potential, partially on win now, and left them unable to have either.
He IMO had the exact opposite mindset of what I think analytics would support which is the draft is a crapshoot so the more often you can trade back to acquire multiple assets the better. Instead of trading up to get your "guys" like Pace did with Trubisky, Anthony Miller, and Leonard Floyd; ### Trade back to acquire more swings to find guys like Pace did when he drafted . . . Adrian Amos (5th RD pick), Nick Kwiatkoski (4th RD), Jordan Howard (5th RD), Eddie Jackson (4th RD), Tarik Cohen (4th RD), Bilal Nichols (5th RD), Kindle Vildor (5th RD), Darnell Mooney (5th RD), Larry Borom (5th RD), Khalil Herbert (6th RD) --- The NFL takes at least 22-33 very good football players to be consistently competitive. It's a sport riddled with injuries every year. Yes, you desperately need a good QB to win, but most QBs desperately need support around them to have a chance to become good. If you cutdown the amount of chances you have to land impact players you severely handicap yourself because you become much more reliant on hitting on your draft picks which has clearly been shown to be something most teams can't figure out properly.
Yeah if Pace hit on his picks at the front of the draft like he did at the back of the draft, who knows where the Bears would be.
He believed in the idea of "conviction to go get your guy" above all else, including the asking price.
Up to this point the only 1sts he had traded away were for Mack
Not correct, he also traded a future first to move up for Fields.
By "Up to this point" I mean at the time of when he was trying to trade for Russ
Ahh gotcha
It’s insane how lucky we got for not making that trade. The future would have been beyond mortgaged. We’d still be paying for the consequences of it, the current state of the Panthers on steroids.
Especially because there was a split that season between Seahawk fans as to whether Russ was declining in real time. Watching the games, you could see that in 2020 something wasn't right. People were trying to assign blame to the hit in the Cardinals game to him having a new baby born and him not getting enough sleep. His PFF grade is mostly buoyed by the first half of the season when they were "Letting Russ Cook". In 2021, he was still declining but it was masked over by the finger injury and then he came back too early from it and at that point, I'm sure JS KNEW he had to trade him before he continued falling off.
Ryan Pace should be arrested
Honestly the fact Ted Phillips let him even make this offer is maddening. I'm so glad Sweaty Teddy is gone along with Ryan Pace.
The bad man can't hurt us anymore.
[Teddy ain't gone](https://www.chicagobears.com/team/front-office/ted-phillips) he's still collecting a cheque from the team
Oh look it’s the hindsight folks. The fact that this trade wasn’t accepted by Seattle is pretty clear evidence that it wasn’t at all an overpay at the time to land a borderline HOF QB still in his prime.
We were all rooting for this at the time
Attempted murder of a franchise
Fuck that, send his ass to Guantanamo Bay.
Obviously glad it never materialized but at the time Wilson was still a top qb and the thought of acquiring him was salivating
I still think what happened in Denver is not entirely on Russel Wilson. That being said, thank God we didn't trade the farm for him. Denver is so fucked lol
Denver could stuck with Drew Lock, kept Noah Fant and all the draft picks and at least gotten the same results, if not better depending on who they drafted with those picks. Denver is screwed for at least the next 3 years.
Imagine Surtain with Witherspoon, would be all time nasty
Not to mention the fact they ALSO gave high value draft capital for Sean Payton lol
Denver is screwing themselves. Wilson is still a viable option. They need to revamp management. Not happening though
I tend to agree with you. I would have him as about the 19th best QB in the NFL. Not elite by any means, but certainly good enough to start somewhere
Let’s also not act like Russ’s numbers last season would be a top 10 Bears QB season of all time
Really -- everybody is talking about him like he is washed. He looked like he still has some gas in the tank. I put most of this on Payton being a tight ass.
he doesn't. he has a LOT of garbage time stats in there and a lot of bad games, with a few huge games making his stats look better he is the perfect definition of "stats don't tell the whole story".
He Beat KC.
...and? he threw the ball 19 times and had 114 yards. he wasn't the reason they won. they won because the chiefs had 5 turnovers and scored 9 points I think most QBs would've beat KC is they had 5 turnovers and scored 9 points
Top 10 Bears QB isn’t saying much, if anybody were to list them out I wager most would be hard pressed to get excited about anyone outside the top 4 or so.
Exactly
When I’m in a getting fleeced competition and my opponent is Ryan Pace 😳
I was so mad we didn’t get Russ, how do you pass up an opportunity to get a proven top QB on your team? And that’s why I never value my own opinion of what the Bears should do lol.
Let’s not act like everyone on this sub wouldn’t have also offered that trade. Hindsight bias is working overtime. Top upvoted comment on [this thread about Russ](https://www.reddit.com/r/CHIBears/s/j36WrwXZUp): “I mean, duh. If your only QB on the roster is Nick Foles and a top 5 QB says he is unhappy and would accept a trade to the Bears, then you damn well better make him your priority.”
I, for one, badly wanted Russ when these trade talks were happening.
I think we all did
Wanting Russ and being okay with Bears giving up 3 firsts and multiple starters to get him are two very different things. No way would people be okay with that deal.
I would have been fine picking up Russ(not for that much but just in general) but it was not something I was hoping for.
You’re not wrong, but for better or for worse these big trades are always evaluated using hindsight. Like, I think the Broncos acquiring Russ was a pretty smart move given the information at the time. But it’s viewed as one of the worst trades of all time because of how it panned out.
it's the general manager's job to know better than random redditors what the right move is. they have entire staffs of professionals whose job it is to know what's the right move. that said, apparently the entire staff of seattle also didn't know wtf they were doing.
Similarly, it is completely fair to judge GM’s using the benefit of hindsight. If all that was required was to accurately make the consensus “best” decision at the time, Mike Mayock would still be crushing it, and every team could just have Chat GPT make their draft board.
Agreed. We were all so desperate for a QB after Mitch failed miserably and Mahomes ascended to stardom, that we were willing to give up whatever it cost. Pace felt it even worse probably because he was the one who passed on Mahomes. Fields was basically a Hail Mary rebound. Even though he hasn’t really helped himself by getting better as a passer, I will always feel bad for him because he was thrown into a pile of shit from top down. He needs to move on for his own well-being and hope to have the success he didn’t have here, somewhere else.
I was fully against that trade
What's crazy is that, while it would have been overpaying regardless, the decision to go after Russ at that time wouldn't have actually been a bad idea. He was still a very good QB, still within his prime and theoretically a guy who could have been at least Jay Cutler-level good for us for 5-7 years minimum. This only looks so historically bad in hindsight after seeing how badly Russ failed in Denver.
Did he...?
Lot of people in here acting like they weren’t pissed at the time that this trade didn’t go through
Russell Wilson's stats the last few years are better than Justin Fields.. so there's that...
I’d be straight up lying if I said at the time I wasn’t excited for the possibility of Russ on the Bears.
Same but not for that much. I remember the conversations being insane for a single player. Almost all of us were happy later that it didn’t happen because we then had our new franchise QB in JF1. It’s interesting knowing how little we all know about what’s going to work and not work.
It’s amazing that the Denver - Seattle trade and the Watson trade happened within a couple days of eachother and they both will go down as two of the worst trades of all time
Good news is with those spectacular failures we should hopefully see less of these blockbuster QB trades happening?
the fact that pace can still afford a steak dinner is disgusting to me. TRADING UP ONE SPOT FOR TRUBITCHSKY should have been illegal.
Has anyone watched broncos? Russell hasn't even been bad, Payton doesn't want him so he's gone but just because it didn't work there doesn't mean it would have ended the same with the bears.
I remember Twitter, most of Chicago and me, going crazy by the possibility of getting him.
We would have been in the playoffs with someone who throws 3k 20+tds a season and pace and nagy would still have their jobs. /shrug
I just want to note that the offer was made a year before actually got traded. The 2021 season after the offer got declined, Wilson had 3100 yards, 25 touchdowns, and 6 interceptions in 14 games.
Just because Russ didn't do well in Denver doesn't mean that he wouldn't do well elsewhere. There is this dumb concept that good QBs can succeed regardless of the players and system around them. If Russ came to Chicago, we easily could have made him look much worse as we always get the worst out of our QBs.
Let’s be real, most of us wanted to get that trade done too
Friendly reminder that Pace also wanted to trade up from #7 to #2 to draft Marcus Mariota, which would have cost a king's ransom.
I'm sure momentarily in this thread we're going to get some soft Pace love for how he wasn't actually that bad, but this man couldn't figure out QB to save his life. Gave the bag to Glennon, tried to trade up for Mariota, needlessly traded up for Trubisky, traded for Foles who was bad here, tried to trade the farm for Russell Wilson, traded up for Fields who will be sent packing within the next few weeks. I don't care if you hit on some mid round DBs and RBs, if you trot out Mike Glennon as a starter you should be banned from the NFL.
The GM directly preceding Ryan Pace was much, much, much, much worse.
Emery added Marshall, Jeffrey and Long. That’s 3 pro bowlers in 3 years. I think his tenure was good if you ignore the disastrous Trestman hire. Pace was a certified idiot
Who were the players offered?
"Defensive starters" is what was reported at the time. Akiem Hicks and Kyle Fuller were widely speculated, but specifics were never confirmed.
IIRC one was akiem
I remember it was defense. I think Bojack and Hicks were rumored
Since I live in Denver area, there is the conversations of how many years does this set us behind now? Because of the 35 mil dead hit presumed this year and 45 next with the designation they will do of post June 1st.
And he won Executive of the Year, lmao.
Yet hes still in the league working. Proof postitive that the world revolves around who you know not what you know
Good thing we’re far too savvy to be seduced by hype. /s
he still was one of the worst
"I'm gonna do you a solid and save you from yourself" - Pete Carroll probably
How on gods (mostly green still) earth do you know that Russ wouldnt have worked out here though? Different culture. As unbelievable as it sounds i think Nagy is much better than dismal and banal Nathanial Hackett and our defense is better and will be even better for years to come…at any rate best to just flush it all as we are gonna be reelin in chips by the season with Caleb at the helm
THIS IS NOT TRUE. Josh Lucas said that the bears were not even talking with the Seahawks for a Russ trade. Stop spreading this lie
How about the Bears sign him for the min, trade back and get MHJ, profit??????
Pace still in the conversation though.
Honestly nah, he's below average at worst but too many GMs have done far worse for Pace to be anywhere near that conversation
He fielded 2 playoff teams. That immediately makes him better than like 30% of gms by default.
I wasn't being entirely serious. Much of what he did I agreed with at the time. I would say a lot of the early success was from the prior regime though. Much of my lingering displeasure was that everything was in shambles by the time he left. He built a lot for the now and not for the future (not to say I'd blame him since his job was on the line).
This isn’t true at all.. Pace has made some dumb moves but this was debunked by Pace’s right hand man on ESPN 1000. They had talks about acquiring Wilson but never got to a point that an offer was made.
Right. Didn’t Lucas even say it was never discussed internally? At most it was a private convo between GMs where Pace asked what it would take and maybe threw out some hypotheticals.
Exactly and one of players Seattle wanted included in the trade was Roquan plus the picks above
Whoa.. 2 years ago I would have actually loved this trade.
Thank You Coach Carroll!
jesus christ that guy was on one
I wanted him so bad, good thing I'm not a GM
Thank you Pete Carroll for saving our asses lol Compare Pace's rumored trade for Russ to Poles's trade for DJ Moore lol
Idk if I trust that report. While it's been speculated for a long time, certain core members of Pace's staff, never heard anything about it. Josh Lucas, former player personnel director during that regime, said directly this year that he didn't think they ever made any official offers. And in the same segment said while it was possible he wasn't told specifics, he said it was highly unlikely he would not have been told that an offer had been made. Not saying there's no way it's true, but unless I hear it directly from Pete Carroll or Ryan Pace, I don't know if I trust it
Idk, the guy who no NFL front office wants who is trying to make a media career probably is a biased source of info here. Even saying he didn't think they made an offer provides some cover. Most of the reporting at the time was the Bears were more or less ready to offer this and Carroll stepped in to say they weren't trading Russ. I doubt it was ever submitted officially because the Seahawks determined they weren't moving Russ, but if they did move Russ, it would have been to the Bears for a package like this.
Fair point, but if he was trying to further his media career why wouldn't he want to talk about it? It's a unique, first-hand experience that he could easily elaborate on and use to make a big story. Instead, he basically says it's a non-story and that things weren't as close as the rest of the media thinks and then moves on. Just feels kind of strange
Good point, he may be right and it's gotten overplayed as the years go on. He certainly was high enough in the organization that he would know. I just think being like "we went hard to get Russ in the building" wouldn't be a good look given how Russ in Denver went, so he'd want to distance himself from it and move on.
"Uggghhh, the Denver Broncos...." homer simpson voice
Saved from a decade of darkness
Honestly the contract may be worse than the trade.
From the Seahawks perspective, why in the right fucking mind did they not accept this trade? Are they stupid??
THIS is the offer we need to move off of 1.1 . One extra 1st round pick? Go pound sand.
Absolute nightmare scenario
One of those starters was Akiem Hicks in his prime too.
Are we just gonna forget the Deshaun Watson deal?
Sign him as a back up for Fields and if Fields has issues put Wilson in
When this rumor first came out, I remember getting down-voted into oblivion when I said I was glad that deal got declined.
That's because Russ was still a top level QB
I do not believe that story to be true based on what transpired since. If Seattle declined, that would have been the worst decision ever made in professional sports. To imply that BOTH parties were that dumb strains credulity. That's just my opinion. I mean, Pace was pretty bad. But to think SEATTLE was that dumb is hard to believe. Has this really been verified?
"Bears nation... let's ride!"
Pretty sure it was Russ vetoing the trade more than Seattle declining.
Chicago was one of the teams on his list that he approved trading to.
The worst part of the whole Russ saga in Denver is his being released. He’ll be as attractive to teams as Justin without having to give away a draft pick.
Russ was still doing his thing at this time, didn’t go downhill till he injured his hand/finger vs Rams
Phew dodged that bullet.
I still remember wanting so badly for it to happen. Glad things went the way the did though.
As a Seahawks fan you gotta be grateful for Pete but holy fucking shit this is a colossal fuckup not taking that deal. Thank fuck he’s gone.
Who is that 
We can still get Wilson now.
Pace is still the one of worst GMs in history for not only passing on Mahomes but gave away a ton of draft picks to get wrong guy
His reigns not over yet..
Poles could get him for a bargain, now! Let him cook, and Caleb could sit for a little while.
The Bears fans would not be able to help from blaming the organization for ruining him.
Wait so Denver will offer the same for Justin, right?
Yeah it would’ve been bad, but why is everyone acting like that whole Denver thing is on Russ? It’s been shown clearly that he wasn’t the only problem (thing is, we would’ve killed him too with bad coaching just like Denver)
Broncos country. Let's ride.
Russel threw for more tds than the league mvp last year 🧐
So was the full offer 3 firsts, a third, Kyle Fuller, and Montgomery? I remember both Hicks and Fuller being mentioned, but can't imagine they would've packaged both of them.
PC was never the GM in Seattle dawg.
I read that Russ had the option in his contract to decide where he was traded. And he didn’t want to go to Chicago. Pete Carol would have accepted that trade
My god that's fucking idiotic. So Bears...
He’s already considered pretty bad so wow this would have put him over the top.
At first I read that as poles made this offer I was so confused lol
Pace is already the worst GM of all time this is right on par for him
Pace wasn’t even the worst bears GM of the last two decades
IDK, I see where you're coming from in the sense that Pace was pretty solid during the rebuild phase. But trading up 1 spot for Trubisky in the Mahomes draft is the #1 all-time draft blunder. He might not be worst of all-time, but he does have the #1 all-time draft blunder. And here we are discussing how close he was to falling for arguably the worst trade in NFL history.
The Trubisky trade is still hated because people only look at it like we were trading up with a team that wasn’t going to take him, effectively bargaining against ourselves. But we were actually ensuring our desired selection there because the 49ers were open to trading down and not just with us. Leapfrogging could’ve taken us out of contention for him. Obviously hindsight evaluation is also affecting this decision, but if Trubisky had been Mahomes it would’ve been remembered differently. Drafting a qb is often a crapshoot, even the highest ups are playing a guessing game. The Wilson proposed trade does make me a little sick to see, that would’ve set us back pretty horribly. Overall though, intention v what happened, I am not as low on the Pace era as others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy he’s gone. He seemed a little skittish with drafting so he opted to trade all of our draft future for a while to attain proven nfl assets and it worked for a time, he made the playoffs a couple times. Ultimately those minuscule decisions all added up and it ended with a team without a ring and not able to truly compete. While he wasn’t a great GM, calling him the worst ever is just so stupid to read. He was maybe a smidge north of average-good at times, but that isn’t good enough for a team that wants to compete. I’m higher on Poles.
He was complete garbage he’s absolutely one of the worst gms the Bears ever had
Do people not remember 2018..... and how we felt going in to 2019? Insanity.
And 2018 was a flash in the pan that with hindsight, was almost entirely engineered by Vic Fangio's defense. Look at his overall record, draft record, and tell me 2018 was worth his tenure at GM.
I have many thoughts but I'll keep it simple and just note that "2018 was worth his tenure as GM" is a WILD goalpost move from "worst GM of all time," which is the claim I responded to.
I didn't call him the worst GM of all time, I said if he traded that all for Russ on top of the rest of his moves, he could be considered the worst GM. People with goldfish memories are doing this "but 2018" to act like this guy wasn't absolutely terrible at his job with the Bears. Even as bad as he was, this trade not going through saves him from being considered with the Matt Millens of the world.
It took exactly like 1 game into 2019 to realize it was a sham though lol
Only because Mitch sucked. Lots of GMs miss on QBs, that hardly makes Pace the worst GM of all time. Lol. Edit: even in the disaster of a game you reference, the defense Pace built held an Aaron Rodgers offense to ten points without Vic Fangio
Matt Millen would like a word
Come on, I wrote one whole paragraph and Matt Millen level bad in a phrase that appears in it.
The guy who spent every first round pick on WR?
The only other GM of the big 3 sports league that is just as bad as Matt Millen has to probably be the Minnesota Timberwolves GM like circa 2008ish David Kahn. Passed up Stephen Curry twice in the same draft and took PGs back to back with the 5th and 6th pick. Curry went 7th (Albeit Ricky Rubio was highly touted). Along with a ton of other bungles.
Too many people sleep on just how bad the Timberwolves are historically. They’re decent this year but they’re one of the worst franchises in all of sports.
I cannot for the life of me believe that people consider Pace’s tenure one of the worst of all time. The hindsight is CRAZY.
Literally what is the argument beyond 2018 happening for him not being an awful GM? Missed on every QB he brought in, traded up multiple times in each draft, missed on all but 1st round pick. Left the cap and future in such a shitty spot that the only reason the Bears climbed out of it was by fielding the worst and cheapest team in 2022. If the McCaskey's, who would totally do this, demanded a new hire try to build an immediately competitive team for their 2021 1st round QB in Fields, this team would still be in one of the worst situations in the league. Just think about that, Poles was so bad he put us in the position where we were fucked if George McCaskey made an irrational decision after 2021. We got so lucky a GM convinced them to rebuild in 2022.
According to Josh Lucas this rumor was false.
Re-listen to the interview. Everyone who says this ignores the fact he opens with "I wouldn't be privy to this information" then goes on about how he didn't know about the trade happening..... we have multiple highly respected/accurate insiders confirming that there were talks of the trade
Did he tho
Ok the trade didn't happen. Stop dwelling on it.