Chicago Bears look bad after Ray McDonald’s latest arrest
The Chicago Bears could have said that they were signing Ray McDonald because he was a good defensive end and they didn’t care at all about his past. That would have been the truth, right? Instead they tried to spin it, and that looks pretty dumb after McDonald was arrested again on Monday.
CSN Bay Area confirmed that McDonald was arrested on a domestic violence charge. Damian Trujillo of NBC Bay Area first broke the news, and he said McDonald was arrested for domestic violence and possible child endangerment.
McDonald was involved in another domestic violence case last year when he was with the San Francisco 49ers. Charges were never brought because there was insufficient evidence. The NFL cleared McDonald of any personal-conduct policy violation. He was also accused of a sexual assault, and according to the San Jose Mercury News he planned to sue the woman who made that accusation. The 49ers released him late last season. The Bears, knowing McDonald could help their defense, ignored his legal past (Bears owner George McCaskey used the time-honored excuse for signing McDonald that “my assessment was ‘bad decision-making,’ allowing himself to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” via the Chicago Tribune), and signed him.
“An alleged victim, I think — much like anybody else who has a bias in this situation — there’s a certain amount of discounting in what they have to say,” McCaskey said in March about McDonald, via the Chicago Tribune. “But our personnel department had done its work looking into the background and the incidents.”
McCaskey said he had deep conversations with McDonald that led him to giving general manager Ryan Pace permission to sign McDonald. Wonder how the owner feels about that now.
What makes it weird is the Bears’ excuses for signing him. The Bears actually tried to sell the public on McDonald’s gesture of paying for his own plane flight to Chicago to meet with the team as a big turning point in the decision. No matter that he had a history of arrests, a very rich man paid for his own flight! They really, seriously put this forth as a good reason to sign him. No lie. McCaskey actually said in that interview, via the Tribune, that his first answer to signing McDonald had been no, but he started to change his mind after McDonald said he’d come out to visit. Unbelievable.
They talked to who they wanted to talk to and heard what they wanted to hear. What message did they really expect from McDonald? McCaskey said he talked to McDonald’s parents, who aren’t exactly impartial in the matter. Like most NFL teams who want to add a player with red flags — the Seattle Seahawks and their drafting of Michigan defensive end Frank Clark comes to mind — they hear what they want because the player in question is really good at football and then try to spin the public (and maybe themselves) on it being OK to make the move. When you start hearing about “decision making” and being in “wrong place at the wrong time,” just know that you’re being played.
Now there are more questions after McDonald’s latest arrest that need to be answered. Pace, the team’s new GM, brought the idea to McCaskey. Vic Fangio, McDonald’s defensive coordinator with San Francisco who is now with the Bears, supported the move. Fangio actually called two teams after McDonald was released by San Francisco stumping for the player, the Chicago Sun-Times said. Presumably head coach John Fox was on board too. They helped convince the owner to sign the guy, who less than three months later was arrested again.
It’s a mess for Chicago now, something they could have seen coming if that’s what they wanted to see.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
