The Chicago Bears are the youngest they've been in 4 years

An NFL roster should have a good balance between young hungry players, and grizzled veteran leadership. You have too many young guys and your roster lacks the experience necessary to deal with the peaks and valleys of a typical NFL season. But too many older guys, and your roster is more than likely to spend too much time in the trainers room.

Professional football is a still a young mans game, but the depth of a roster should be full of ascending talent, ready to push the veterans for starting spots.

The Chicago Bears have had one of the oldest rosters in the NFL for a few years now and they've seen their win total decrease from 10 in 2012, to 8 in 2013 and 5 in 2014.

Lovie Smith had a veteran roster that understood his system in 2012, but his 10 wins weren't enough to save his job. Marc Trestman was brought in to revamp the offense in 2013, while keeping the veteran D intact, but that didn't go to plan. And then last year the bottom completely fell out.

The general manager in charge of the Bears from 2012-2014 was Phil Emery and his overall legacy isn't looking very promising. There are only 2 players left on the team from his 2012 draft and none of the UDFAs he brought in that year have stuck either.

His 2013 draft was a bit better as 4 of his 6 picks still remain, and he has one UDFA, Demontre Hurst, still hanging around.

Emery's entire 8 man 2014 draft class is still in Chicago, plus he found Christian Jones as an UDFA and he added former Dallas 2014 7th round pick Terrance Mitchel last September.

The jury is still out on some of Emery's 2013 and 2014 rookie class, but a few of those players are hanging on by a thread.

Emery was trying to keep the Bears competitive, when he probably should have started to rebuild. Each year he brought in a handful of veterans that he thought would contribute, but the team simply didn't have any young impact players in the pipeline from Jerry Angelo's previous general manager reign. The last few Angelo drafts were seriously bad.

Jimmy Kempski of the Philly Voice has been ranking NFL team's 53 man rosters by age since 2012. At the start of the season, the Bears had the 5th oldest roster in 2012, the 4th oldest in 2013 and the 3rd oldest last season.

Current Bears' GM Ryan Pace has been hard at work retooling his roster as five of his six draft picks are on the active roaster (with top pick Kevin White on the PUP list) and five undrafted free agents among the recent 53 man reveal.

Pace's first ever 53 man roster dropped down to 14th oldest in the NFL with an average age of 26.21. In fact, his roster got even younger when they cut 30 year old safety Sherrod Martin and replaced him with 22 year old rookie UDFA Harold Jones-Quartey. The Bears made another move after Kempski calculated the ages, when they cut 24 year old Jordan Mills and added 25 year old Patrick Omameh. But as you can tell, they still come out even younger that the original 26.21 average.

Being young doesn't automatically equate to wins, as evidenced by the St. Louis Rams being youngest all 4 years, but take a look at the recent Super Bowl winning teams. The 2012 champion Baltimore Ravens were the 21st youngest, 2013 champion Seattle Seahawks were 4th youngest and the 2014 Super Bowl XLIX winning New England Patriots were 11th youngest.

In looking over the five oldest rosters from 2012 to 2014, there aren't many postseason threats among them.

I do find it interesting that the oldest team this year, the Indianapolis Colts, are being picked as a Super Bowl contender by numerous NFL pundits.

The Bears have to find that sweet spot as they balance the roster between youth and experience, but I think they are headed in the right direction.

What are your thoughts on the Bears getting younger?