Bears Sign Former 49er Ray McDonald To One Year Deal
Well then. Interesting move here. On the one hand this will absolutely help the Bears Defensive line and the familiarity with Vic Fangio is a huge bonus, and on the other, well, Ray McDonald by all accounts is a colossal scumbag and a pretty awful person through and through. I’m a realistic guy, I understand that the NFL is a performance based league and if you perform and win you can have anyone on your roster and get away with it. I’m sure there will be some people that will say they won’t watch the Bears anymore or that this is disgusting, and I certainly don’t disagree with their feelings towards Ray McDonald the person, but you also probably shouldn’t have been watching the NFL for the past 50 years if you can’t stomach every awful guy who is talented at football. That’s not to excuse anything Ray McDonald has allegedly done but if you only root for the most upstanding citizens, the roster starts to look pretty thin across the league, that’s just the brutal reality of how the NFL works. If you want to start banning guys who have been convicted of sexual assault or domestic violence I’m all for it, completely in favor, but until that day comes on a league wide basis teams will always give good players with a bad past a second chance. The Bears have to compete with all the other teams out there that will sign guys like Ray McDonald, in a perfect world they could say no and take a stand, but this isn’t a perfect world. Ryan Pace, John Fox, Vic Fangio, all of those guys have tremendous amounts of pressure to win now, and if they think Ray McDonald helps them get to winning now then they’ll do it. I know for some people that sucks to hear because they would prefer the Bears to always take the higher road. I’d prefer to win with only good guys as well, but that’s just not how the NFL works.
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Also, the blessing came from up high, which tells you that either 1)Vic Fangio was able to convince everyone Ray will stay out of trouble and isn’t a bad guy or 2) The McCaskeys realize beggars can’t be choosers and they’ll do anything to win. Probably a healthy mix of both if I had to guess.
PS
By the way the real answer here is Bears should openly talk about McDonald’s past and how they will rehabilitate him. Make it open, don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.