One of the biggest fears Chicago Bears fans had was Mitch Trubisky leaving and thriving somewhere else. Call it the Ryan Tannehill Syndrome. Everybody of course remembers Tannehill floundering in Miami, being traded to Tennessee and suddenly morphing into a Pro Bowler. What if the same thing happens with Trubisky? The Bears will look incredibly stupid at that point.
Well, it seems some of those Trubisky fans may have overplayed their hands a bit. The NFL didn’t think as highly of the former Bears quarterback as they did Tannehill. That was clear when he signed with the Buffalo Bills for just $2.5 million to be Josh Allen’s backup. Was the market really that silent for a former #2 overall pick who was a Pro Bowl alternate at one point? That seems to be the case.
So how bad was it? Let Denver Broncos insider Ben Allbright paint the picture.
Per multiple sources Mitchell Trubisky was very interested in Denver and trying to compete for a starting job, but the Broncos never offered.
— Benjamin Allbright (@AllbrightNFL) March 30, 2021
Think about that. The Broncos have quarterback questions of their own. Drew Lock is considered on thin ice up there. The team is seeking competition. Vic Fangio is their head coach and George Paton their GM. Both know Trubisky as well as anybody in the league. Fangio worked with him in Chicago. Paton was with the Vikings during his entire run with the Bears. Yet they took one look at him and politely declined.
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That should tell people all they need to know. If a team like that didn’t think Mitch Trubisky was worth giving an opportunity to compete for a starting job, it pretty much says the Bears made the right decision by moving one. They did everything in their power to help him. In the end, the kid just didn’t have it.
Mitch Trubisky is proof that patience in the NFL is long gone
Could he have ended up being a solid quarterback? It’s possible. Trubisky has always shown flashes of somebody who can play at this level. One doesn’t make the playoffs twice by sheer accident. The problem has always been his inability to digest the massive amounts of information being thrown at him at blistering speed. This is why he so often would freeze up in certain situations, leading to brutal interceptions or bad sacks.
Maybe if he’d been given more time the light would’ve gone on eventually. Some good examples are Richard Todd and Rich Gannon. Todd was uneven through his first five seasons with the New York Jets and looked like a bust. Then in 1981, he threw 25 TDs to just 13 interceptions and got them to the playoffs. Gannon? He was a backup and spot starter for the first 11 seasons of his career. Then he made the Pro Bowl in 1999 and was MVP by 2002.
This is why some people continue to hold out hope for Trubisky.
The problem is those times are over. Social media and the internet have decreased the patience of fans like never before. Quarterbacks better show signs of being good in their first couple of seasons. If they don’t, it’s time to get them out of town and the entire regime that brought him in. The fact Mitch Trubisky managed to make it four years is a bit of a miracle when you really think about it.