Bears general manager Ryan Pace’s recent flurry of expensive veteran additions was a sharp change from how he approached the offseason his first three years in charge.
In the trades for offensive guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson and signings of center Drew Dalman, defensive end Dayo Odeyingbo and defensive tackle Grady Jarrett this month, the team took on contracts totaling a little over $200 million over the next three seasons. Granted, not all of that money is guaranteed, but it’s still massive overall, and those five account for nearly one-fifth of the salary cap this season alone.
It’s a sign that Poles and new coach Ben Johnson are aligned on going all-in to contend this season, and that’s good. With quarterback Caleb Williams going into his second season and Poles’ rebuild theoretically complete, it’s time.
That money must prove to be well spent, though. Big money contracts are fine for big-production players, but the combination of overpaying and underperforming is what sunk the Bears at the end of the Ryan Pace era and led to this job being open for Poles to take in the first place.
In 2021, with Pace and coach Matt Nagy already having gotten an extra year of grace from chairman George McCaskey that many thought was unwarranted, the Bears mortgaged their future salary-cap space and draft capital on a roster that went 6-11. It lingers as a cautionary tale about shaky job security leading to bad decisions and misreading how close the team was to being competitive.
That team traded away a future first-round draft pick to move up and select quarterback Justin Fields, but had already promised the starting job to Andy Dalton as part of Pace’s free-agency recruiting pitch. Neither played well, and five of the Bears’ six highest-paid players played poorly or missed significant time due to injury.
The ensuing mess took years to clean up. The entire first season under Poles was spent demolishing the roster to even have a chance to begin construction in Year 2.
As he leveled out the cap and draft assets, Poles took an ultra-conservative approach to spending in order to avoid going down the same path as Pace. That changed this year with his haul in free agency and trades.
All the acquisitions have major questions to answer this season.
Jackson is coming off an injury and a frustrating season with the Rams, and while he has a Pro Bowl selection on his resumé, that was back in 2021.
Thuney and Jarrett have outstanding track records, but both will be 32 when the season starts.
The Bears paid Odeyingbo on a projection of what he might become as he enters what should be his prime, but words like projection, might and should require faith.
Dalman was the top free-agent center on the market, but missed half of last season with an ankle injury and will need to establish cohesion with Williams and all-new teammates on the offensive line.
If all or most of that works out as Poles and Johnson expect, it’s great for the Bears. Good players cost a lot. That’s how it works.
And then, Williams and Johnson will dictate what the Bears truly gain from those acquisitions. Williams showed tremendous potential as a rookie and was a huge draw for Johnson, who had turned down several jobs over the last three years but couldn’t pass this up, but admitted he didn’t play as well as he’d hoped and has a lot of work to do.
If the Bears want to make a meaningful run in Johnson’s first season, they need Williams to make such strides that he becomes a top-10 quarterback. That label gets thrown around casually, so to give it some specificity, he needs to outperform players like the 49ers’ Brock Purdy, the Packers’ Jordan Love and the Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield to put himself in that category.
And the Bears desperately need Johnson to be a difference maker in the way former coach Matt Eberflus never was. Johnson won assistant coach of the year as Lions offensive coordinator last season and was coveted throughout the NFL, but the league is full of formidable coaches. Future Hall of Famer Sean Payton finished fifth in Coach of the Year voting last season, and the Packers’ Matt LaFleur, who has an insane .670 career winning percentage, was 10th.
The bar is extremely high for quarterbacks and coaches in this league.
The goal for the Bears is not merely to make upgrades from what they’ve been. That’s fairly easy since there’s virtually nowhere to go but up after a 5-12 season. The key is for these moves to vault them to the level of the true competitors they’re battling, like the three returning playoff teams right in their own division in the Lions, Vikings and Packers.
If the money the Bears spent this month is evident on the field this season, it’ll enhance Williams and empower Johnson. If not, the Bears already know that path all too well.
