I've now connected the rear facing inputs and outputs of my gear into the back of a patchbay. Now all of my ins and outs can be accessed with short patch cords from the front of my rack, and they're all really close together. I hardly ever need to crawl behind the rack and repatch. If you have any balanced gear, or expect to buy any in the near future you should buy a balanced patch bay. You can still use unbalanced signals, but have the opportunity for upgrading later, and the difference in price is minimal.
Normalled outputs describe any internal connections that the patch bay has.
A fully normalled bay connects the rear top jack to the rear bottom jack if no cables are connected in the front. You could patch your tape inputs on the top row, and your direct outputs on the bottom row. In other words, if you connected nothing to the front of the bay, the mixer's direct outs would be connected to the tape deck's inputs automatically. This is also good for insert points. You can place the sends in the top row and returns in the bottom row.