Regime Change Is Coming For Chicago Bears, But Will It Be A Complete Overhaul?

Changes are coming to the Chicago Bears after a 6-11 season, with Matt Nagy almost certainly coaching his final game with the franchise in Sunday’s 31-17 loss in Minnesota. Team chairman George McCaskey is expected to announce by mid-week whether seventh-year general manager Ryan Pace will also lose his job as the result of a 48-67 record during his tenure, including two postseason games. 

The Bears last won a playoff game during the 2010-11 season, when Lovie Smith was the head coach and Jay Cutler played quarterback. They’ve used 15 different quarterbacks in the last 11 seasons, missing a chance to upgrade the position when they selected Mitchell Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson in the 2017 draft.

Pace was only 37 when McCaskey and Bears president Ted Phillips hired him. He and Nagy were honored early in their tenures with the Bears, with Pace being named the Sporting News’ Executive of the Year in 2017 and Nagy selected as Coach of the Year by both the Pro Football Writers Association and the Associated Press after a 2018 season when the Bears went 12-4 before losing to Philadelphia in the Wild Card round.

That was the Bears’ most recent winning season. Their 22-27 record over the last three seasons seems at least as much of a reflection of a relative lack of talent as poor coaching but the Chicago Tribune’s Brad Biggs wrote last week that it is possible Pace will outlast Nagy to play a role in a likely coaching search.

Pace hired former Carolina and Denver coach John Fox to replace Marc Trestman as head coach shortly after he joined the Bears from New Orleans, where he served as director of player personnel. The Fox era was a failure, with a 14-34 record over three seasons. 

While Phillips is the Bears’ president, his emphasis lies on the business side of the operation, not the football side. He is currently engaged in the team’s ongoing stadium efforts at the site of Arlington Park, a suburban horse track the team purchased last year. 

There has been some speculation the Bears will expand their front office by adding a president of football operations to work alongside Phillips. Biggs, a veteran reporter/columnist who specializes in covering the Bears, speculated in print Pace could be promoted to a newly created position rather than being dismissed. 

McCaskey took a hard look at the team’s management before retaining Pace and Nagy for the 2021 season. Pace walked away from Trubisky after last season. He continued the search for a franchise quarterback by moving up in the draft to select Ohio State’s Justin Fields with the 11th pick. The deal with the New York Giants cost the Bears their first-round pick in 2022, which wound up as the seventh overall pick. 

In trying to win the NFC Central on an annual basis, Pace has limited the Bears’ future flexibility. While the salary cap is expected to increase by $25 million next season, the roster includes six veterans whose cap hits increase about $50 million in 2022, the two biggest being Khalil Mack ($14.6 million-$30.2 million) and Eddie Jackson ($5.1 million-$15.1 million). 

The Bears opened this season 3-2 but a 24-14 loss to Green Bay at Soldier Field began a five-game losing streak and an 1-8 stretch that makes regime change seemingly inevitable.