The Chicago Bears’ 2021 NFL trade deadline was an embarrassment

The NFL trade deadline expired and the Chicago Bears let it pass by like Deebo Samuel running away from practically every Bears defender—they did nothing.

The Bears are still making every effort towards a playoff push. It seems delusional especially amid a three-game losing streak, a 3-5 record and an offense that makes scoring points seem harder than getting into Harvard.

Everything is delusional and full of grandeur during the entire tenure of the McCaskey family owning the Bears.

The Bears should be acquiring as much draft capital as possible to build a championship-caliber roster around rookie quarterback Justin Fields. It makes all the more sense since he is on a rookie contract.

Instead, Bears General Manager Ryan Pace keeps spending draft picks and salary-cap space like finding great deals on Amazon Prime Day. I can picture him rationalizing it like we all do by thinking if it goes on the credit card, at least you get the reward points. Sure, it seems like a good idea to load up on kick returners but you have to eventually pay off the balance once it comes due.

Pace’s mismanagement of the salary cap, his missed talent assessments at premium positions and his mismanagement of draft capital all lead to a situation where no moves could be made and a roster that is going nowhere fast.

Do you want examples?

Nick Foles’ presence and contract hang like an albatross on this franchise’s salary cap. Jimmy Graham is getting paid big money to catch one pass and get Wednesdays off. Andy Dalton is getting $10 million to wear a ball cap.

Those three poor roster decisions forced the Bears to cut Kyle Fuller and Charles Leno Jr.

What does Pace do to replace them? Move up in the draft (spend more draft picks) to take a player with a bad back who never played left tackle. What happens? Said player, Teven Jenkins requires surgery so the Bears have to double back and convince Jason Peters to get off a fishing boat and play football one more year.

We have seen how the secondary is playing outside of Jaylon Johnson to see how well Fuller has been replaced.

The Bears could have moved Allan Robinson since they barely use him anymore and have no intention of keeping him beyond this season. They should have traded Aikem Hicks since they also have no intention of bringing him back after his contract is up. Heck, they should have moved Danny Trevathan for something.

Guess what? They could not because…

1. They are all making too much money to be traded.
2. The Bears do not have a ton of cap space to keep certain cap hits like with what the Broncos did in the Von Miller trade.
3. The Bears think they have a shot at the playoffs.
4. Pace and Head Coach Matt Nagy are hanging onto their jobs by a thread.

Bears Chairman George McCaskey and team President Ted Phillips will judge Pace and Nagy on if they make the playoffs as a seven seed after however long this losing streak lasts. The logical assessment of Pace and Nagy a football person would make is the development of Justin Fields.

George and Ted are admitted, non-football people.

Think about that folks, the two people in charge of running an NFL franchise are not well versed in football’s inner workers. Let that soak in for a second and I will step aside as you scream in frustration as I did earlier.

I will always be baffled that the only asset the McCaskey family has that makes them billionaires is football and they have shown over and over again they do not know the first thing about running a team. They entrust another non-football person to be the President and CEO of the whole operation.

You would think they would be experts in the only thing that makes them worth billions. Billions of dollars people!

You would think George McCaskey would already have made the assessment Ted Phillips’ sole focus should be on getting a new stadium in Arlington Heights a reality. You would think he would have assessed that Pace has wasted too much cap space, missed on too many talent evaluations and missed badly on Mitchell Trubisky that he would have moved on from Pace years ago.

Finally, you would think he would know that Matt Nagy is too stubborn to alter his offense to maximize and grow Justin Fields and that he is not the right head coach for the team’s most valuable piece.

Alas, it seems he has not thought that way. Instead, he goes forward with the Phillips, Pace and Nagy leadership group. A group that is leading the Bears to nowhere.