The Bernstein Brief: Bears Optimism Is A Reach
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) One can only celebrate addition by subtraction for so long. The belief that anything else has to be an improvement might be true, but it does little to change the assessment of what the current Bears are right now.
Marc Trestman was told to return to his home planet, delusional con man Brandon Marshall will infect yet another team and Phil Emery was finally victimized by enough of his own poor decisions. While the first two are easily erased, the last is not -- years of mostly fallow drafts have left this roster thin all over, set precariously against a game of injury and inexorable erosion.
When the first arguments for improvement involve random chance, that's a bad sign.
Even going back before Emery, we see too much bad drafting that has made the Bears bad, forcing them to chase mediocrity by overpaying free agents, extending deals for players past their prime and making desperate trades. There's no shortcut to recovering from that, and it will take years of many more hits than misses for first-year general manager Ryan Pace to stabilize a team lacking this much depth at so many positions.
As we begin another summer of expectation, it's understandable to hope for the best, but it's more reasonable just to hope for some kind of better, in time.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
