The thing is if Pace and Nagy are as bad as we all believe them to be, then the whole Mack trade isn’t even worth debating in a vacuum because 1) it was made by incompetent people 2) those draft picks and cap space would have been utilized by the same incompetent people. The same people who found cap space for Robert Quinn’s deal but couldn’t shore up an O Line that’s has been killing this team and any QB that lines up behind it.
The argument could also be made that because the Bears have drafted and acquired so poorly that if the Mack deal hadn’t happened there may well have been zero playoff appearances and no division title in 2018.
And with so many more personnel decisions to have been made it’s possible the 2021 team would have been made up almost entirely of Pace’s beloved diamonds in the rough. Or they may well have made an even worse big free agent signing sometime between the Mack deal and now.
I don’t think the Mack deal kept them from not still sucking at their jobs and they would have just found another way(s) to do it. The Bears are a poorly run franchise that has borne a lot more resemblance to the Lions than the Packers during the vast majority of my lifetime and my entire adulthood. Then I heard George and Teddy the other day and that was the last straw for me. Since I was already in the process of washing my hands of this shithole state, I went ahead and washed my hands of this clown show sports franchise along with it. Thoroughly enjoyed my first game as a Packers fan yesterday. No regerts.