Watching the Super Bowl unfold was a great lesson for the Chicago Bears. For months, the team and its fans have wrestled with a singular question: what to do at quarterback. Do they keep Justin Fields, attempting to build further around him in hopes he can blossom into a star? Or do they cut their losses and use the #1 overall pick on whichever quarterback they think has the brightest NFL future? People are divided almost right down the middle on this subject. After watching the Super Bowl, anybody with common sense should have reached a conclusion.
The Bears have to draft a quarterback.
A cold reality will have set in. San Francisco had a terrific roster with Hall of Fame-caliber players at several positions. However, Kansas City had the ace. They had the better quarterback. Patrick Mahomes once again made the key plays in the big moments to lift his team to a third championship. For an idea of how critical having a top-five quarterback is in this league, take a look at every Super Bowl winner since 2010.
- 2023 – Patrick Mahomes
- 2022 – Patrick Mahomes
- 2021 – Matthew Stafford
- 2020 – Tom Brady
- 2019 – Patrick Mahomes
- 2018 – Tom Brady
- 2017 – Nick Foles
- 2016 – Tom Brady
- 2015 – Peyton Manning
- 2014 – Tom Brady
- 2013 – Russell Wilson
- 2012 – Joe Flacco
- 2011 – Eli Manning
- 2010 – Aaron Rodgers
You can safely argue that a future Hall of Famer won all but two of those games. The days of building great rosters and having them carry a decent QB to a title are over.
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The Chicago Bears can’t know what the future holds.
There is no telling if Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, or somebody else in this draft class will ever reach that tier of excellence. However, one thing they can safely say is Fields won’t get there. He’s a world-class athlete, a hard worker, and great leader. Sadly, he lacks the necessary precision to become a true assassin in the passing game. The same problem bedeviled guys like Lamar Jackson and Michael Vick. It’s why they always made the playoffs but never reached a Super Bowl. They always ran into somebody who could make the toughest throws in critical moments.
Fields has routinely shown he can’t do that. GM Ryan Poles seems to have reached the same conclusion. That is why he set the price tag to trade the #1 pick so high. He intends to take a quarterback. Every championship team in this league needs a nuclear option. The Chicago Bears haven’t had one since the World War II era. They’ve tried many times to find it again. One of their biggest issues during that long drought was an unwillingness to admit what they had wasn’t good enough.
Poles isn’t going to make that mistake.
