Changes for the better? It remains to be seen.
Bears roster looking like a half-completed puzzle
The Bears spent the first three weeks of the new league year becoming different, but at this point it’s difficult to make a case they’ve gotten better.
General manager Ryan Pace said he views the offseason puzzle as halfway complete — and that leaves room for improvement. With less than four weeks until the NFL draft, it remains to be seen whether that means finding strong rookies with the team’s eight picks, adding a few more modestly priced players in what is a suppressed free-agent market or taking another swing at a long-shot trade for Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.
The Bears have added or re-signed 16 players, and to borrow from former GM Jerry Angelo, don’t confuse activity for achievement. Twelve of those signings have been one-year contracts, and it’s possible none of the four players who received multiyear deals — kicker Cairo Santos, defensive linemen Mario Edwards Jr. and Angelo Blackson and outside linebacker Jeremiah Attaochu — will start.
Pace has been handcuffed by a perfect storm created by the salary cap rollback as a result of COVID-19 and the team’s history of renegotiating high-dollar contracts to create
cap space. That has limited what the Bears have been able to do and led to the release of two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Kyle Fuller, a move that clearly made the defense worse if the Bears plan to roll out Desmond Trufant as a starter.
It didn’t preclude them from bidding for left tackle Trent Williams or wide receiver Kenny Golladay in free agency, but the team remains tight on cap space and likely will have to create more room to sign its class of draft picks.
The Bears solidified their clumsy social media declaration that Andy Dalton is QB1 when Pace and coach Matt Nagy spoke via Zoom calls Friday morning.
That’s not surprising when you consider Nick Foles’ performance last season and his failure to beat out Mitch Trubisky in a 2020 training camp competition that left plenty to be desired.
“He’s been a starter in the league for a long time and produced at a high level for a long time,” Pace said of Dalton. “That’s all of us collectively in the building, coaches and scouts, coming to that conclusion as we went through the free-agency process and, yeah, he’s our starting quarterback as we head into the season.”
Pace ticked off skills that attracted the Bears to Dalton, and he kept circling back to the fit within the offense, which sounds an awful lot like the explanation given for the trade to acquire Foles a year ago. Pace also cited Dalton’s accuracy, experience, leadership and the fact he has won a lot of games.
Fifty of Dalton’s 74 regular-season victories came between 2011-15 in Cincinnati. That was so long ago that Jay Cutler still had another year to go as the Bears starter when Dalton’s hot run with the Bengals ended.
The Bengals had a very competitive roster when Dalton broke into the NFL — a defense that at the time was led by current Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, a good offensive line and more than enough skill-position talent around the quarterback.
The Bears are hoping they can plug Dalton into a similar situation in which the pressure isn’t on him to necessarily be a “multiplier,” a term Nagy often uses todescribe elite players. If Dalton can run the offense efficiently and make good decisions, the thinking is he would represent a considerable step forward from Trubisky.
As things stand, the Bears haven’t done a lot to surround the position with talent — not yet anyway. Of the 16 moves, four have come on offense.
The Bears used the franchise tag to secure wide receiver Allen Robinson, and there has been zero movement on a multiyear contract for him. They signed Damien Williams as a reserve running back, re-signed Germain Ifedi to play right tackle and added Elijah Wilkinson as a potential swing tackle.
That’s it for moves on the offense to this point, which means Dalton needs to be leaps and bounds better than Trubisky even if the Bears come up with some help via the draft.
Getting nose tackle Eddie Goldman back after he opted out last season will be a huge boost for the run defense, and it’s possible the Bears will re-sign strong safety Tashaun Gipson and avoid using a fourth starter alongside Eddie Jackson in four consecutive years. Pace is optimistic new defensive coordinator Sean Desai will do well.
Until the Bears can make more moves offensively or acquire a significant upgrade over Dalton, they’re banking on Trubisky being the primary reason the offense was an inconsistent mess against all but the worst opponents the last two seasons.
They didn’t say as much Friday, but no other conclusion can be drawn after listening to Pace and Nagy. But to this point, evaluating the roster reshuffling as actions always carries more weight than words.
“We wanted to get better in different areas of our team,” Pace said. “And (quarterback) is one of the areas where we feel like we’re improving . ... I thought we addressed a lot of needs.”
If the puzzle is halfway to completion, some big pieces are needed to point to real progress for the offense.