Hub Arkush: Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy can’t afford to swing big at quarterback

LAKE FOREST – There is an extremely popular narrative out there among Chicago Bears observers and fans that Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy have to get back to the playoffs and win a playoff game – or games – this year to save their jobs.

What I don’t understand though is how that premise has caused so many of its believers to preach Pace and Nagy have to make a big swing at quarterback to survive?

Is better quarterback play all the Bears need for the GM and head coach to start designing Super Bowl rings and cause George McCaskey to start writing their new paper?

If you believe that I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I can give you a heck of a deal on.

Yes, better quarterback play is a key requirement in the recipe Pace and Nagy are trying to write but franchise QB level play isn’t if other things aren’t fixed.

The only way the Bears can be as good as or better than the 8-9 version of themselves is in addition to upgrading the quarterback position they must:

• Make significant improvement at both offensive tackle positions.

• Re-sign Allen Robinson or replace him with like talent that will almost certainly cost a high draft pick(s) or 10s of millions of dollars in free agency.

• Keep Jimmy Graham or if he is going to be a cap casualty add an expensive compliment to Cole Kmet.

• Re-sign Tashaun Gipson who like Deon Bush and DeAndre Houston-Carson are all free agents or invest another high draft pick or the same millions in free agency for a plug and play rookie starter or quality starter level veteran.

• As exciting as getting Eddie Goldman back will be, Roy Robertson-Harris, Mario Edwards Jr., Brent Urban and John Jenkins are all free agents. Goldman, Akiem Hicks and Bilal Nichols are the only D-linemen the Bears currently have under contract.

• Cordarrelle Patterson, Cairo Santos, Eddy Pineiro, Patrick O’Donnell and Sherrick McManis are all free agents. Without a significant investment of free agency dollars, draft picks or both the Bears special teams will be crippled.

• In addition to all of that every other starter or contributor that remains will have to play to or hopefully above the level they played last year.

So how does all that work?

If reports are true that Bobby Massey is already gone the Bears are still about $1.5 million over the cap and Nick Foles is the only QB accounted for.

Some have suggested cutting Akiem Hicks and/or Kyle Fuller to create cap space, but with A. thru G. above already an issue, and not enough cap space or high draft picks to fix it all, how do you then also replace two of the three or four most important players on your defense?

It is easy to see how the Bears could create cap space by redoing Hicks’, Fuller’s, Eddie Jackson’s and Cody Whitehair’s deals if all are agreeable and create about $25 million in additional cap space although that’s a pretty aggressive number.

And let’s say they cut Graham, Miller and Javon Wims saving another $9 million.

That’s enough to pay Robinson and either about 80% of Wilson’s $19 million cap hit if you trade for him, or Watson’s entire $10.7 million cap hit with about $7 million in cap space left.

But without your next three first round picks and Khalil Mack or Roquan Smith which is where a package for either of those QB’s would start, what exactly do you do about A., C. through G. and the loss of one of your two best defenders?

And by the way, Wilson is currently only under contract through 2023 and Watson’s cap hit would go up by $25 million in 2022.

Should they trade up to draft a top prospect?

That would also cost multiple day one picks, leave Foles as this year’s day one starter and based on recent history give them less than one chance in 10 of actually landing a franchise QB.

Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy can swing big at quarterback this spring or summer, or they can try and make this Bears team a contender this season, but they can’t do both.

And if the latter is what it takes to save their jobs . . . they have to be thinking good enough, not special at quarterback.