Spoiler:
dougthonus wrote:fleet wrote:Hhhhhhh...
Sad read. Lots more at link.To understand all that went into the 2017 quarterback draft and the resulting Trubisky era in Chicago, Bleacher Report spoke to sources who are connected to the Bears, Chiefs and Texans, as well as to evaluators around the league who studied the quarterbacks. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity given the classified nature of team evaluations and draft strategyThough Pace finally had looped Fox into the Trubisky plan that morning, many in the organization didn't find out about it until the Bears traded four picks to move up to No. 2 and the phone call was made to Trubisky. A source familiar with the situation says Fox was not alone in his contrary opinion about the quarterbacks. The love for Trubisky was "not unanimous" among personnel and coaching staff.
Pace seemed to be fixated on the quarterback position and on Trubisky, to judge partly from what was seen as an unnecessary trade from No. 3 to No. 2.
"I don't know where they were getting their information [on needing to move up], but it was not great sources," said a source close to the team. "To give up four picks to move up one spot, that was another ridiculous thing. Especially on a team that didn't have great talent anyways. They [the 49ers] kind of duped [Chicago]."Across the league, scouts, GMs and coaches were stunned by the Bears' move. "Everyone was like, 'Holy ****! They just took Mitch Trubisky No. 2?'" said a scout whose team drafted a quarterback that year. "There was no way we thought they were going to get Trubisky. That was so far removed from what we thought could be reality."
The shock was partly because Pace had kept his intentions quiet, but mostly it was because, for many teams, Trubisky was ranked as the third quarterback and a late first-round pick.
"I'm not sure anyone had Trubisky as high as the Bears did," said a scout who closely evaluated quarterbacks that year.
"The division is glad Chicago picked him," said an evaluator who worked in the NFC North at the time. His team graded Trubisky as a third-round pick.
"Deshaun was 1A and Patrick 1B," said an AFC scout. "[Trubisky] was in consideration; he just wasn't ranked with those guys. If you want to say third, then yeah, that's where he was."
"Trubisky third, and it wasn't even close," said the scout whose team drafted a QB that year. "We had so little to work with on Trubisky. I mean, he's a one-year starter, you know? And for much of his [college] career, he was beaten out by a guy who wasn't even going to play in the NFL. As much as they tried to say he was more prototypical than other guys, he was as much a project as they were.One source who previously worked with the Bears during Trubisky's time doubts that he will ever be the franchise quarterback that his No. 2-pick status would suggest. His inexperience in big games in college didn’t prepare him well for the NFL, and his biggest weakness is difficult to coach: “It revolves around confidence, but really it is the mental part of the game,” the source says. “That’s ... where the other two were ahead of him in the process. The situation he is in being compared to the other two, it kind of compounded his issues. He got dealt a bad hand.”So he went to ask a coach friend on UNC's offensive staff why the team wasn't starting Trubisky. What the hell are you guys doing playing Marquise Williams at QB when this kid is on your team?
"He was laughing, and he said something like, 'The guys just played for Marquise,'" the scout recalled. "He wasn't knowingly taking a shot at Trubisky, but I took a mental note that there is something missing with this guy. There is no way talent-wise that Trubisky shouldn't have been playing. And Marquise Williams kept him on the bench?"
"The Williams kid had the heart of the locker room and the pulse," the scout whose team drafted a QB that year remembered learning from his research on Trubisky. "The players rallied around him, which is part of the reason why he started those years over Mitch."
"When they described how he couldn't win the starting job from Marquise, you ask follow up questions about that," said the scout who evaluated quarterbacks closely. "Do the guys like him? Do the guys gravitate towards him? And once you start going down that road and asking those questions, it's something that is always in the back of your mind when you're evaluating him."
The "It" factor. Looking back at the 2017 draft and considering why so many player evaluators are saying today that the Bears' mistake was obvious back then, the "It" factor is what they say Watson and Mahomes had that Trubisky did not.
"Mahomes had a swagger confidence to him. Deshaun was kind of almost how Russell Wilson was, like this guy makes you feel something when you're talking to him," said the former AFC scout, echoing other sources.
What about Trubisky? "You just didn't get this feeling of a leader of men, a guy that just stood up and looked you in the eye. It's hard to put an actual word to it."
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2911595-why-how-the-bears-trubisky-and-the-fateful-2017-nfl-draft
Some pieces of this are certainly interesting, but a lot of this sure feels like one of two things:
1: People morphing their opinions of four years ago to better match the reality of today.
2: Hunting down people who gave you the quotes you wanted for this article.
Just google 2017 NFL mock draft. The first 8 mock drafts I saw all had Mitch Trubisky as the #1 QB including CBS, ESPN, and SI.
He fell a low as #12 in several, and so I agree (and said at the time) trading up was ludicrous, but everyone acting now like they knew MaHomes or Watson were so great are full of crap. If those guys were predicted to be what they are then they would have gone #1 and #2 in the draft.
So I'm not defending the Bears in picking Trubisky, whom I personally didn't like at the time, and certainly am not defending them trading up for taking him, this is just a hit piece with trumped up quotes to make it look even more ridiculous than it was. You don't need to exaggerate/flat out lie about an already bad decision to prove your point, no one looks back at this and thinks that was a good pick.
Its a long article, I thought they did well presenting the information they had seriously. Balanced fairly well based on what info they had. Once you go through it, doesn’t seem a hit piece reaching for a conclusion imo, it looks like earnest work.
So many times in the draft you see teams blowing up what publications are putting out there. I think BR are relying more on league sources and scouts more than publications. I have often thought about the possibility that other teams in the Bears situation could have made a different choice because in general, the raw upside guy often is chosen behind guys that have the best combination of upside plus production. At the top of the draft anyway. Scouts love production and film. And the starter thing, that is a red flag that you would have to say weighs heavily on teams looking at a QB.
