3 ways former general manager Ryan Pace failed the Chicago Bears

The Chicago Bears travel to Atlanta to take on the Chicago Bears southern version.

The Falcons currently have six former Chicago Bears on the active roster. Damiere Byrd, Nick Kwiatkoski, Germain Ifedi, Cordarrelle Patterson, MyCole Pruitt, and Abdullah Anderson are currently on the 53-man roster. Elijah Wilkerson and Damien Williams are on injured reserve.

The Falcons also signed Eddie Goldman in the offseason but he was placed on the retired list. Khyiris Tonga was on Atlanta’s practice squad for a brief period as well before he was signed to the Minnesota Vikings’ active roster.

In addition, the Falcons have five former Chicago Bears position coaches on their coaching staff and two former general managers in the front office.

The reason for the Chicago Bears’ influence on the roster is former general manager Ryan Pace is one of those two former general managers now working for the Atlanta Falcons.

Pace ran the Bears for seven seasons.

The Chicago Bears went 48-65 between 2015-2021. The Bears won the NFC North in 2018, sneaked into the playoffs in 2020, and never won a playoff game.

Outside of that magical 2018 run, the Chicago Bears varied between mediocre to not very good. If you take out the 2018 season, where Pace won the NFL’s Executive of the Year, the Bears were 36-61.

Only 17 players are remaining on the Chicago Bears roster that Ryan Pace drafted or signed in free agency.

Ryan Pace inherited a mess from his current Falcons’ front office colleague, Phil Emery. After three years of rebuilding the roster, Pace built a playoff contender. Then things just got worse from there and the team bottomed out last season. Pace was fired and now Ryan Poles runs the show.

A few things happened that allowed things to get so bad that Poles is now starting over from scratch to build a sustained winner on the lakefront.