Chicago Bears: Was Kyle Long taking a shot at Ryan Pace?
It’s no secret there isn’t a lot of love lost between the Chicago Bears and former offensive lineman Kyle Long. Since leaving the game, and embarking on a media career, Long has been very critical of his former team.
While he’s sure to clarify he loves the Bears and his fans, it has not stopped him from taking his former head coach Matt Nagy to task for a variety of moves and decisions. He even went so far as to say he would not entertain a return to Chicago last season where there were reports he might be contemplating a return from retirement.
More recently, it seems that general manager Ryan Pace has come into his crosshairs. In that regard, Long is just like the vast majority of Bears fans who, let’s just say, aren’t the biggest fans of Pace.
Long’s most recent comments center around a very touchy subject for Bears fans, and that is the mishandling of the 2017 NFL Draft relative to Deshaun Watson. As we all know, Pace didn’t even bother to bring in Watson for a private workout/interview, and didn’t think he was worth sitting down to dinner with, despite doing all of those things with Patrick Mahomes and Mitchell Trubisky.
Former Chicago Bears lineman has sharp words for Ryan Pace
Since that time, Pace has received a lot of criticism for what was clearly a terrible process.
But perhaps the most cutting remarks came from Long who recently discussed Watson’s current situation in Houston with CBS Sports and Adam Schein. The topic focused around Watson’s desire to get out of Houston, but Long found a way to tie it all back to Pace through the theme of disrespect.
Long made it clear that Watson has been “disrespected” essentially since coming out of college. Then he went on to make specific comments that can only be interpreted as referring to Pace. Long said:
"We have to start from the beginning. When Deshaun Watson was coming out of college, Dabo Swinney said this is the Michael Jordan of football. And if you’re not an idiot, you take that seriously. And if you are an idiot, you may go to the Pro Day and not even have a chat with him."
It’s not difficult to put two and two together and realize that the “idiot” who did “not even have a chat” with Watson is his former general manager.
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Those are strong words from a former Bear, but then again, it’s hard to argue with anything he said.