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 with the ones who are staying. That’s backward.
Bears general manager Ryan Poles’ decisions to sign linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, trade for 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 the second year 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 other spots, that was the end for former general manager Ryan Pace. He had 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 only 11 holdovers from the Pace era — eight of whom are starters — on the roster.
The flaws in Poles’ roster might cause frustration once the season gets rolling, but they’re understandable and fixable — not now, perhaps, but with a 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 blatantly bad answers. It’s better to be the 2023 Bears and not know yet whether Fields and other players will be as good as they hope than to be the 2021 Bears and be certain they won’t before the season even starts.
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 consistent quarterback who one day can lead the Bears to the Super Bowl. The Bears need clarity on that 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 thinks he has done everything he can to fortify the offense around Fields, but there’s uncertainty there, too. Receiver Chase Claypool hasn’t been what the Bears thought they got in the trade with the Steelers last season, and four of the five starting offensive linemen missed time this month because of injuries.
Might 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 trailing by 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 Edmunds’ $72 million signing.
The Bears’ top two defensive ends, Yannick Ngakoue and DeMarcus Walker, had a combined 16œ 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. Walker missed extensive time in camp with an injury, and Ngakoue seems to still be in the ramp-up program since beginning practice Aug. 7.
‘‘Definitely wish they were going the whole time, but that wasn’t in the cards this particular training camp,’’ coach Matt Eberflus said Tuesday. ‘‘Those guys are gonna be — and they have been — working with the training staff to get their conditioning right, to get their levels right, and then also working with the coaches to get their technique right as we lead up to the first game.’’
That’s Sept. 10 against the Packers — not much time left. When asked how he knows it all will work out, Eberflus said of Ngakoue and Walker, ‘‘We like where they are.’’
That’s all the Bears have been able to say for months. They like their roster on paper and like where they think it’s headed. Now it’s time to find out whether they’re right, and that mystery is much more entertaining than going into a season when it seems inevitable it all will go wrong.
