Bears Must Rebuild to Use NFL Draft, Free Agency to Find Next Quarterback

Stankevitz: It's time to blow up the Bears originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

Blow it up, tear it down.

Just save us all from watching more Bears games like that.

“That” being the Bears’ 41-25 loss to the Green Bay Packers, which was yet another nationally-televised embarrassment for the NFL’s charter franchise.

It’s what happens when your franchise is stuck in quarterback hell. Again.   

They’ve been here for decades.

And the only way out is to blow the whole damn thing up.

Yes, that means blowing up the defense – which got blown up by Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Jones and Davante Adams on Sunday night anyway. Everything.

Some team wants to trade for Khalil Mack? Do it. Akiem Hicks? Wipe a tear away as you say goodbye. Kyle Fuller? Yep. Roquan Smith? Well, the Dolphins traded Minkah Fitzpatrick a year ago.

Oh, and whoever the general manager is in 2021 should not draft a quarterback in the first round. Unless they’re 100 percent sure Mac Jones or Kyle Trask (and not Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Zach Wilson or Trey Lance, assuming none are available when the Bears pick) is the answer to the question that’s befuddled this organization for years.

MORE: Loss to Packers may be point of no return for Pace, Nagy

Maybe this seems drastic. But the Bears’ best-case right now is to be irrelevant, a team nobody notices or cares about outside of the city of Chicago. Their worst-case? They’re a joke. They’re slide No. 1 of a presentation in How To Not Run A Football Team 101.

Do you really want to keep re-living games like the Bears played against the Packers or Vikings or Titans in recent weeks?

The Bears could try a patchwork approach to fixing their roster in 2021 and run it back with this defense (just hope they don’t lose Hicks again for any period of time). But with little cap space, a mid-first-round pick and an aging roster, the Bears’ immediate future feels pretty bleak.

Oh, and they’re stuck with Nick Foles next year.

So instead running it back and going 7-9 with a handful of embarrassments: Commit to a really bad, awful, terrible season. Hopefully just one. But in the process of going, say, 3-13, you start freeing up cap space and amassing as many draft picks as you can get.

So trade, trade, trade. Get what you can get. Start creating cap space for 2022. Find the right general manager and the right coach to withstand a bad year, like the Dolphins did, while building for the future.

(I actually think Matt Nagy could be pretty good at managing a team through a tank year. But he also may not get the opportunity.)

And while whoever the GM is shouldn’t use a first-round pick on a quarterback, take a developmental player on Day 2 or Day 3 of the draft. Pace said he wanted to draft a quarterback every year; the only guy he’s drafted might go down as the worst pick in NFL history, based on the other two quarterbacks who were available at the time.

MORE: Bears must think bigger if changes are on the way

Give yourself a spin of the wheel, at the least, while you look toward 2022 to get one of the best two or three QBs available. And hopefully you can drop that quarterback into a young, talented roster flush with cap space.

The point is the Bears need to start building their roster for when they draft a quarterback of the future. It’s how they can get out of quarterback hell rather than being the dog in the fire saying “this is fine” amid a bunch of 74.7 passer ratings.

And if that means making some painful decisions? Well, hopefully it means an end, at some point, to the painful viewing experiences the Bears have subjected us all to recently.