Hub Arkush: Bears brass stamps end of 100th season with promise of change

My overriding reaction to what happened Tuesday at Halas Hall in Ryan Pace's and Matt Nagy's season-ending news conference is: What exactly did you expect?

Anyone who hoped for definitive answers on the futures of Mitch Trubisky, Adam Shaheen, Trey Burton, Charles Leno, Leonard Floyd, Nick Kwiatkoski, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix and others - that's your bad, not Pace's nor Nagy's.

The NFL is a cold and often cruel business in which players more than friends, fathers, sons and brothers are just assets.

Diminishing any remaining value they may have by throwing them under the bus would just be compounding a disappointing season with a final act of stupidity.

At 3 p.m. March 18, the 2020 "league year" will begin. Until then, other than perhaps the re-signing of one or a few of their own free agents, or restructuring of an existing deal to create salary cap space, we aren't really going to learn anything about the 2020 Chicago Bears.

When asked about potential changes to his coaching staff, Nagy said he hadn't gotten to it yet - and we then found out via Twitter an hour or so later that offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich, offensive line coach Harry Hiestand, tight ends coach Kevin Gilbride and assistant special teams coach Brock Olivo had all been fired. That was disappointing, but it probably assuaged the concerns of some of the haters that nothing was going to change.

I think the firing of Hiestand is a huge mistake, but we'll save that for another day.

What I can't understand is how the Twitter-verse was filled with frustrated fans howling at the moon, saying how dare the Bears claim all is well.

That is clearly not what Pace and Nagy had to say.

Specifically, when asked how he could expect Bears Nation to believe things would improve with a struggling quarterback and playcaller returning, Pace told us, "We sit here today disappointed in our season. Obviously, we expect more of ourselves, from our team. We didn't hit the goals we set out to achieve.

"The next four or five months are about hard decisions, decisions that require an honest assessment of our roster and our entire football operation.

"It is about identifying problems, gaining clarity on the issues, doing whatever it takes to solve them.

"Our head is not in the sand, that everything is fine. Not at all.

"We never want this feeling in our guts ever again.

"I think if you look throughout our team, we were disappointed in a number of things.

"When I talk about hard decisions in the next four to five months, that's us stepping back, letting the emotions subside ... what are the problems, what are the solutions, how are we going to fix that. We're all on board with that."

That's good enough for me, for now.

Obviously, Mitch Trubisky is the Bears' starting quarterback until he isn't.

But there was one spin on that which cannot fly.

Pace, Nagy, Chairman George McCaskey and President and CEO Ted Phillips obviously rehearsed their talking points and were all singing from the same hymn book about Trubisky.

Asked why they still believe in Mitch each, in turn, repeated: We've seen the flashes of the great things he can do, now we just need consistency.

Digging a little deeper, Nagy offered that his young QB has to get better at reading defenses and making the right decisions.

I have seen the flashes and I agree, there may still be something there to covet.

But when you are bad more often than you are good, that's not about consistency. That's about learning the position and getting better.

Reading defenses and making the right decisions, that's about learning the position, too, and has little to do with consistency. Too many great QB prospects show a lot more flashes than Mitch has, but never become "the guy."

I'm all for continuing the experiment and I'm actually pulling for the kid.

But let's make sure we don't pretend he's closer than he is, it's going to be easier than we think, and that there is anything acceptable about not having a real Plan B when the 2020 season begins rather than having the same conversation again a year from now.

• Twitter: @Hub_Arkush