It's been nearly three weeks since the Bears fired Jerry Angelo and this week has been the first real movement we've seen in the openings. Interviews have finally been happening and most fans seem happy enough with the candidates and the fact that there is finally movement.
However, this slow-moving process is not without problems; fans saw two candidates they really wanted; Reggie McKenzie and Eric DeCosta, drop out before the search started. So I'm going to do my optimist-pessimist look at the search and try and weighs the pros and cons of how the search is going. As usual feel free to weigh in.
Pessimist: The Bears taking their sweet time is classic McCaskeys. They want to seem like they are being thorough so that when they settle on Tim Ruskell it can be justified with "well we went through all the candidates and explored all our options." If they had really done that they would have moved faster and gotten an interview with Reggie McKenzie and tried harder to get Eric DeCosta to at least talk to them. This whole thing is a sham to install Jerry Angelo 2.0, aka Ruskell. In the meantime he is the interim guy meaning he's probably screwing up our talent evaluations as we speak. Other teams will have their GM positions filled by the time the Bears are just finishing up interviews in all likelihood meaning all the better to settle for Ruskell. "Now the draft is only two months away, no use in bringing in an outsider when he's been the interim and is more ready for the draft than any outside guy could be at this point" will be the excuse. Ruskell will also be a Lovie yes man and continue to settle for the mediocrity we've seen the last eight years.
Optimist: The Bears taking their time is a good thing. They are spacing out the interviews to give them time to thoroughly talk with each one and then examine how the interview went and figure out the best road to take with the candidates. They are interviewing Ruskell who, so far anyway, is the only full qualified candidate with a clear drafting record. Ruskell is not merely a JA 2.0, he's his own man and while his record in Seattle isn't superb, most of the guys he drafted are at least still on NFL rosters, which is more than can be said for Jarron Gilbert, Mark Bradley and Michael Haynes among other JA picks. They have talked to all the right guys, no one was going to get DeCosta to interview so shutty on that one and Reggie McKenzie was destined to be a Raider. The Bears are going about this the right way and it seems to me that the Bears are going to get the best candidate. Their will be new ideas in the front office before long. There is plenty of time for a new guy to come in and evaluate and be ready for the draft.