Ryan Pace may never recover from what has clearly become the greatest mistake of his career as GM. Drafting Mitch Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. It’s a move that he is universally laughed at for these days. It’s also a move that tends to get a lot of guys in his position fired. Dave Gettleman said getting the wrong quarterback in a draft can set an organization back five years. This is the possible road the Chicago Bears are going down.
Pace has to wonder where he went wrong. From the outset, the man had a vision of what he wanted at quarterback. He wanted Drew Brees. He’d seen the future Hall of Famer carve his bust down in New Orleans for almost a decade. Pace felt he had an idea of what to look for when the time came to draft his own quarterback. It took a few years, but that opportunity arrived in 2017. After deep evaluations, the GM was certain that Trubisky checked all the boxes that Brees did.
Well. All except one.
“At Pace’s introductory news conference as Bears GM in 2015, he mentioned Brees eight times. His objective, then, was to find the Bears’ version…
…Pace — who declined to be interviewed for this story — and his top lieutenant, director of player personnel Josh Lucas, became magnetized to Trubisky by midseason and ultimately reconciled some of the bigger issues that deterred others, including some within the Bears organization.
Pace wasn’t concerned that Trubisky spent his first two seasons in Chapel Hill, N.C., backing up Marquise Williams, who wasn’t drafted. As others scrutinized Trubisky’s college inexperience — he threw only 572 passes compared with Watson’s 1,207 and Mahomes’ 1,349 — Pace focused on the constant spark Trubisky seemed to lend, even when he was in a backup role.”
Ryan Pace forgot that Brees was highly proven out of college
In his mad rush to mold Trubisky into the next Brees, Pace forgot one of the critical factors about the latter. He was a starter for three years in college. He threw over 1,600 passes during that span and won a lot of big football games. The guy was not a one-year wonder. He’d proven himself as a sustained success and that eventually carried over into the NFL. Trubisky played 13 games at North Carolina, had a solid year and then was gone.
Would another year of college have revealed his shortcomings more?
This is why many talent evaluators take college experience so seriously. NFL defenses are known for being able to adjust to players from year to year. The thing is college defense can do that do. A quarterback can take a conference by storm one year and then the next he’ll look much more human, leading some to think he was operating with the element of surprise and raw talent rather than true QB excellence.
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Jim McMahon had his faults but the guy played two superlative seasons at BYU. So it was clear he had the goods. By contrast, Rex Grossman was great his first full year at Florida in 2001 with 34 TDs. The next? He had just 22 and threw 17 interceptions. Defenses had clearly caught on to him but the Bears ignored that anyway. This is the danger teams risk when taking one-year wonders like Trubisky. It might work out, but the odds aren’t as good as you’d think.
Pace was confident it would be fine. He was wrong.
