Don't mistake what I'm trying to say here. I still don't think Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace is anywhere near a great GM.
But get this --- perhaps he's not nearly as terrible as what everyone thought. Maybe the guy is, dare I say, adequate.
Average.
Somewhere in the area of ordinary.
I mean, here we were about 24 hours ago thinking the man was the worst GM in the history of sports for funneling all the hopes and dreams of the once-proud Bears franchise into that weathered right arm of newly-acquired quarterback Andy Dalton.
Heck, I think keeping Mitch Trubisky --- for as terrible as he is --- would have been a better plan than bringing Dalton in to be your quarterback, but in the world where we are enamored with (and consume all things) NFL, this Ryan Pace story sure has taken quite a twist.
In a place like here in Pittsburgh, where football is king and the quarterback is winding down to his final days, it made me perk up and pay attention. Because, really, is there a succession plan after Ben Roethlisberger?
I mean, I guess it involves Mason Rudolph at this point, but who really knows?
Anyhow, back to the Ryan Pace and Dalton story and how perceptions can change in just one day; goes like this …
So apparently Pace met up with Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider recently and laid a pretty heavy offer on the table to try to woo quarterback Russell Wilson to the Windy City.
The Bears, of course, would get Wilson in the deal.
The Bears would shuttle off to the Pacific Northwest in return the following: three first-round picks, a third-round pick and two players who were starters for the Bears.
Yep, the old "six for one" job. The kind of mega-deal we don't see all that much in football and reminding some of the pact that sent Herschel Walker from the Cowboys to the Vikings in 1989.
The Seahawks general manager took the deal to the powers of the Seahawks for a pondering session and, the way it has been reported at least, head coach Pete Carroll nixed it. After all, the guy is almost 70 and hell if he wants to go through some rebuild with a new QB in the dimming days of his career.
Selfish on Carroll's part? Sure, in a way. But if you have that power and can use it, the problem isn't with you, it is with the people above you in the organization who allow you to have that much power.
So here we are, left with a bit of a new way of looking at Pace and the Bears. Or, at least I look at him differently than I did just a day or so ago.
Pace isn't a guy who targeted Dalton and saw him as the quarterback he needed to get. Rather, Pace is a general manager who swung big with a gigantic offer and tried like heck to get a real quarterback to come and play for his team, willing to risk much in the process.
He gets respect for that. A lot of it.
He was willing to take a big risk when he knew his franchise needed a real player at the single-most important position in all of sports --- quarterback in the National Football League.
Makes me then think of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the perpetual question that seems to be hovering over them. When it is apparent they need a quarterback ---- and those days are coming soon ---- will they take that big risk?
Will the front office affirm a trade that rockets them up the draft order? Will they offer pieces they have if they can go get a solid quarterback off another NFL team?
I sure hope so. I really do.
