The NFL deadline for teams to get their rosters down to 53 for the regular season always sparks a preoccupation with the players who are leaving rather than the ones who are staying. That’s backward.
Bears general manager Ryan Poles’ decisions to sign linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, trade for wide receiver DJ Moore and commit to quarterback Justin Fields in the offseason mattered far more than the fringe-of-the-depth-chart moves he made Tuesday.
Now that the Bears have finalized their roster, what is it? The outcomes range from playoff contention if everything goes right to picking at or near the top of the draft again if most of it backfires.
It’s unrealistic to expect a perfect roster from Poles in Year 2 of a rebuild, especially when he had little choice but to burn the first year sweeping out salary-cap problems and stockpiling future assets. This roster is flawed, of course, but having flaws on the way up is a lot different than having them on the way down.
When the Bears went into the 2021 season with crippling holes at cornerback, left tackle and various other spots, that was the end for former general manager Ryan Pace. He’d had all the time he needed, and that 6-11 team was the best he could produce when he was doing all he could to get to the playoffs.
Poles has churned the roster to the extent that less than 18 months after he took the job, the Bears have just 11 Pace holdovers on the roster. That includes eight starters.
The flaws in Poles’ roster might cause frustration once the season gets rolling, but they’re understandable and fixable — not now, but with salary-cap windfall and draft capital awaiting the Bears in 2024.
And a roster full of question marks is better than a roster full of bad answers. It’s better to be the 2023 Bears and not know yet whether Fields and various other players will be as good as they hope than to be the 2021 Bears and be certain before it even starts that they won’t.
All of Poles’ moves go back to Fields and whether he can make the jump from showing flashes of potential to being the type of consistently quarterback who can one day lead the Bears to the Super Bowl. The Bears need clarity by the end of this season.
Fields is their biggest unknown. He rushed for 1,143 yards last season, but was last among NFL starters at 149.5 yards passing per game. He was unconvincing in training camp. Even the Bears can’t be sure what they’re about to get.
To that end, Poles believes he’s done everything he can to fortify the offense around him, but there’s uncertainty there, too. Wide receiver Chase Claypool hasn’t been what they thought they got in the trade with the Steelers last year, and four of the five starting offensive linemen missed time this month because of injuries.
Could it all be OK? Maybe.
The defense being a work in progress affects Fields, too. An already hard job will get harder if he’s constantly down 10 points.
The rebuild is going well on that side of the ball except that the Bears might be missing the one thing every defense needs most: a pass rush. If their defensive line can’t get pressure, it’ll undermine what looks like one of the best secondaries in the league and the $72 million Edmunds signing.
The Bears’ top two defensive ends, Yannick Ngakoue and DeMarcus Walker, had 16 1/2 sacks for their previous teams last season. If they’re around that total again, it’ll look good. But again, even the Bears can’t be totally confident of that after Walker missed extensive time with an injury and Ngakoue seems to still be in the ramp-up program since beginning practice Aug. 7.