Ryan Poles’ New-Look Bears in starting to fall into place
To say Ryan Poles has made his mark on the Bears roster he inherited from Ryan Pace is an understatement. We know all about the big-name departures like Khalil Mack and Allen Robinson, but what about the sheer quantity of players not returning from last year’s squad?
Well, Aaron Leming from the Bear Report did the math, and the size of this mass exodus is more than a small shock:
Just 22 players remain from the Ryan Pace era after today. That means the #Bears had an overall turnover rate (on this initial roster) of close to 59% of their current roster in one offseason under the new regime. https://t.co/Pk4WIUKb4q
— Aaron Leming (@AaronLemingNFL) August 30, 2022
22 players from last year’s 53-man roster, and that number still could go down by the time any last trades or signings of players cut from other teams roll in. That’s a 58.5% turnover rate.
To put it another way, Ryan Poles got rid of more players from the 2021-2022 roster (31) than the Bears just cut in the latest round of roster restriction (27).
And, just for kicks, to put it yet another way, the Bears downsized at a more precipitous rate from last year’s roster (58.5%) than they have since the beginning of training camp (41.1%).
League Comparison
In case you’re wondering how much churn an NFL team typically goes through from one season to the next, overthecap.com has a nice NFL roster-turnover breakdown of the year-by-year averages. Over an 8-year span, the average NFL team retains 56.6% of their roster. The Bears retained just 41.5%, which is closer to the average two-year roster retention (35.1%).
This isn’t record-setting. Teams slash rosters every year. But it’s never much more drastic than what Ryan Poles has done this time around.
This is, in no uncertain terms, a vastly different team than what we saw last year. Ryan Poles has wasted no time tearing down the house he walked into as the new head of Halas Hall. Now let’s see how quickly (and how well) he can rebuild it.
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