NEWSLETTER
Ben Brown of Pro Football Focus identifies a list of teams in a position to lose enough games in 2020 to snag Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence – currently projected to be the top-rated quarterback – at the top of the 2021 NFL Draft.
Among the group in Brown’s post, you’ll find the usual quarterback needy franchises like Miami, Jacksonville, Washington, and a host of others that don’t have long-term fixtures in place at the most important position in sports. But you’ll also find the Chicago Bears. Which … hmm. We’ll bite, but I already have a lot of questions.
Brown envisions Nick Foles as the Bears’ QB1 to start 2020. Sorry, Mitch Trubisky, PFF has cast you aside for a guy who lost his gig (twice) to Gardner Minshew. From there, he sees the 2020 season as a platform to fully evaluate Foles. If Foles plays well and shows signs that he could be a multi-year bridge solution, a restructured contract could keep him around and allow Chicago to kick the can down the road when it comes to finding a long-term solution. But if things don’t go well for Foles and the Bears, Brown posits that the Bears would get in a position to draft Lawrence.
But while I’m usually all for outside-of-the-box thinking when it comes to finding the Bears’ next franchise quarterback, there’s a fine line between being creative and going full galaxy brain. And this walks that tight-rope quite delicately. The process as to how Chicago landed on this list is understandable, as Brown sought to find teams that were (1) positioned to tank or (2) an injury away from bottoming out for a top selection. But while I would come short of saying the 2020 Bears hitting rock bottom is unfathomable, Brown falls short of explaining how or why exactly such a free fall would occur.
Think about it. The 2019 Bears finished with an 8-8 record *despite* quarterback play deemed (by PFF!) to be the eighth-lowest-graded among qualifiers (and second-lowest among those with at least 900 snaps). So basically, by PFF’s own admission, the 2019 Bears would have done better than a .500 mark had the team possessed replacement level quarterback play. Meanwhile, while you can’t always count on health, the Bears dealt with some seriously lengthy injuries to key contributors like Trey Burton, Akiem Hicks, Taylor Gabriel, Bobbie Massie, and Danny Trevathan, who all missed long stretches of the season. (Michael: And, heck, they were one game-ending made kick away from a 9-7 record, anyway!)
So … for the 2020 team to totally drop off the cliff, a series of unfortunate (and unforeseen) events would need to hit Chicago’s football team so hard it would make the eight misfortunes that plagued C. Montgomery Burns’ softball team in 1992 pale in comparison.
For example: Khalil Mack clucking like a chicken after meeting with a hypnotist? Akiem Hicks arguing with a barfly over which of Pitt the Elder or Lord Palmerston was the the greatest British Prime Minister? Eddie Jackson being too busy to make the game carrying a player piano out of a burning building? Allen Robinson being removed from the team for not shaving his sideburns? I could go on … but I won’t.
But here’s the thing about the idea of a Tank For Trevor campaign. We do not know what lies ahead for Trubisky and Foles when it comes to the 2020 NFL season. But we do know that when one quarterback is at the end of his rookie deal and the other has an easy out to exercise in his contract, it is absolutely fair to be thinking about the Bears taking their next shot at finding a franchise quarterback in the 2021 NFL Draft.
However, perhaps we should let the 2020 season play itself out before we travel down that road.
And for the love of Halas, keep Eddie Goldman, Kyle Fuller, Roquan Smith, Cody Whitehair, and others away from the nerve tonic. It has been known to cause gigantism in some cases.
