Arkush: Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy will be back, but we don't really know why

The Bears confab with George McCaskey, Ted Phillips, Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy satisfied absolutely no one with the possible exceptions of Pace and Nagy.

While Pace and Nagy should be pleased they're keeping their jobs at least one more season, I'm not sure how pleased they were since McCaskey and Phillips did more to hang bull's-eyes on them than anything they said to make Bears fans feel good about the decision.

There are two very different prisms through which you have to view what we learned or didn't learn Wednesday.

The first is Pace and Nagy have not failed in their jobs. Their record the last three seasons has them well placed in the top half of the league.

They did take a step back in 2019 and failed to improve this season, and they took another swing at the quarterback position and missed again.

But you know what, which teams did make significant improvement this season?

The Browns, Dolphins and maybe the Bills if they win Saturday.

You can throw in the Bucs, but all they did was get Tom Brady.

While fans don't want to hear it for reasons that mostly escape me, the pandemic changed the world, and the NFL was no exception.

It's not an excuse, people. It's a reality that with no offseason, a dramatically interrupted scouting process leading into free agency and the draft, no offseason workout program, no OTAs, no minicamp, no exhibition season and a regular season in which every day they came to work was dramatically interrupted and changed by protocols and mitigations, it made it near impossible to improve.

Without getting too deep in the weeds, I was designated as Media Tier 2M at the start of the season, meaning I went through almost all the same daily protocols as the players, coaches and staff through the first half of the season until the league made changes.

It was exhausting and at times almost debilitating meeting all the requirements before I even thought about doing my job.

Expecting Pace and Nagy to excel under those circumstances is unrealistic, and they didn't get worse, they just didn't get better.

There is enough talent on the roster certain to be back that with the right offseason adjustments the Bears could contend in 2021 if the virus doesn't upend the season. Pace and Nagy are in a better position with their institutional knowledge to make that happen than someone new.

Whether you agree with the decision to bring them back, you have to see there is a case that can be made for it.

It's that second prism the majority of us are viewing this through because McCaskey and Phillips didn't make it.

What McCaskey did do and what is causing real consternation among the fan base is exacerbate the confusion and turmoil around Phillips.

Phillips has become the focal point of the ire of the majority of disgruntled Bears fans — quite unfairly if he is not involved in the football side of the operation.

Phillips' tenure as president and CEO spans the last 21 seasons. He is responsible for the multiple disappointments of the first 15 or so of those seasons, and that is why we've been told the last few years he has been removed from the football side of the business.

McCaskey went out of his way to tell us it is absurd that Ted or he would meddle in the football business, but then told us repeatedly that Phillips was one of his main advisers in evaluating Pace and Nagy.

You can't have it both ways.

The Bears didn't fail by not firing Pace and Nagy.

They failed because they made little effort to convince us it was the right decision while a fair amount of what they said suggested it wasn't.

• Twitter: @Hub_Arkush