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Rozner: Bears' Pace easy guy to root for

Yes, Ryan Pace was an unlikely hire by the Bears.

But pretty much everything about Ryan Pace is unlikely.

Only 14 years ago, the Texas native packed up his stuff and departed downstate Charleston for the trek to Southern Louisiana in a “beat-up car,” unsure of his future but certain that if the Saints offered him a job as a gopher, he would try harder at getting coffee than anyone ever has in the Bayou.

The 37-year-old Pace was a defensive end for Eastern Illinois, but even that was unlikely. His high school team in Flower Mound made the state finals his senior year, but there wasn't much interest in Pace.

So his dad went to work trying to find him a college football home.

“He sent tapes to about every school,” Pace told the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier in 1999. “I got calls from about every Midwest school, places I'd never heard of.

“So we went to every place from Augustana to Purdue. We paid for our hotels. They weren't official visits or anything.”

Described as undersized, underweight and under-talented, Pace made himself into a college football player, just as he took an internship with the Saints and worked his way up to director of player personnel.

Yes, Ryan Pace is entirely unlikely, and that makes him easy to root for no matter where he goes in life, his latest stop being Lake Forest, where he's charged with fixing the personnel disaster that is the Chicago Bears.

Pace said he intends to watch every play from the Bears' 2014 season, which is the first fallacy of his tenure as GM. No human could sit through that and avoid an extended hospital stay. Pace will either begin violently throwing up or resign before that happens.

His past suggests he's a very hard worker and he'll need everything he's got and everyone he knows to fix what's wrong with the Bears, and assuming he intends to gut the program and rebuild, the Bears are several years away from being a consistent playoff team.

They have precious few starters likely to be around in three years and they'll need to locate a quarterback as fast as possible.

Pace said he will lean heavily on George McCaskey and Ted Phillips as he learns a new job and all that goes with it, from hiring a head coach to the salary cap to discovering players in the draft.

And therein rests the disappointment of many fans.

There had been reports the Bears would hire an Ernie Accorsi type to oversee football operations, giving Pace a football guy to lean on instead of men who think of themselves as football types but have led the Bears to 5 playoff wins in the last 25 years.

There had been reports of a sideways move for Phillips away from football entirely, and those reports also turned out false.

Phillips made it crystal clear Friday that the GM will report to him, meaning he still holds the power of the purse and the power to veto or approve anything Pace wants to do.

Phillips may not meddle, necessarily, in football decisions, but Pace also has no one above him with the football knowledge to say stop and take a step back, as Phil Emery had no one to tell him not to rush into contracts for Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall.

So the Bears have again hired a GM with no experience and still have no voice in the office next door that can guide him through the huge decisions.

It doesn't mean Pace won't or can't succeed.

If anything, the Bears are due to get something right following decade after decade of embarrassing hires and foolish decisions.

In the meantime, Pace will go to work learning his craft and Bears fans will have to cross their fingers and hope he can learn quickly on the job.

It may seem unlikely, but Ryan Pace is more than comfortable with that.

brozner@dailyherald.com

•Hear Barry Rozner on WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.

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