Chicago Bears: Don’t overreact to the roster moves

The Chicago Bears have trimmed down their roster to 53 players but don’t overreact just yet.

With the regular season set to kick off in less than one week, the Chicago Bears trimmed their final roster down to the 53-players who will embark on the team’s journey to try to win a Super Bowl.

The team was late to announce, as the last batch of cuts were not announced until well after the 3:00 pm EST filing deadline.

As is the case every year, fans are devastated over learning the news that “their guy” was cut. All over Chicago this morning, fans are playing general manager and likely over-inflating a particular player’s value because they looked great in the few practices they saw or the games against second and third-string competition.

However, at the end of the day, the Chicago Bears moves were pretty much as expected with the exception of maybe two roster cuts — offensive lineman Alex Bars and outside linebacker James Vaughters.

With depth at both positions thin, it is at least somewhat surprising that the team wouldn’t keep Bars who not only performed well but demonstrated versatility at many positions or Vaughters who flashed brilliantly at times in the preseason games.

Before you get out the pitchforks and go after Ryan Pace, let’s take a step back and put it all into perspective.

With respect to Bars, his college coach, Harry Hiestand, is the Bears current offensive line coach. He certainly had a ton of input in this decision so it’s not as if it was random.

As for Vaughters, while he produced well in the games, it was rarely against top-notch competition — and besides, there is more to the evaluation of a player than just how they perform in the preseason games.

Finally, another reason one should reserve judgment on all these moves is that, well, they’re not over. Other teams around the league have all made similar difficult decisions which means one team’s trash could become another team’s treasure. Perhaps Pace has his eye on other players who he expected to be waived by their respective teams. Remember when outside linebacker was a huge question mark last year? Then Pace pulled off a trade for Khalil Mack right around this time last year.

Now I’m not suggesting the Bears will pull off a blockbuster trade like that, but I am saying that fans should reserve final judgment until all of the moves are over. And besides, some of those players you’re pining for could find their way to the practice squad if they clear waivers.

Finally, as a complete aside, the Bears did not keep one undrafted free agent this year when in year’s past, with such a weak roster, that would have been unlikely. It’s another sign of just how much Pace has turned this thing around, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now.