Few teams have a longer track record of missing out on great quarterbacks than the Chicago Bears. Most remember their appalling decision to pass on Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. There was also passing on Aaron Rodgers in 2005. They didn’t sign Kurt Warner that same year because they didn’t want to let him compete with Rex Grossman. They bypassed Daunte Culpepper for Cade McNown in 1999. The list goes on. Yet no decision probably haunts the franchise to this day more than passing on Joe Montana in 1979.
Now some people will argue that a lot of teams passed on Montana. He didn’t go until the 3rd round of that draft. Those people don’t know the backstory. The Bears had eyes on the Notre Dame standout for over a month as the draft approached. They felt he was the only option worth where they were picking at #66. Sure enough, Montana fell to them. It got so close to where they literally had his name written out on the card. All they had to do was turn it in according to Dan Pompei of The Athletic.
Then GM Jim Finks committed his greatest career blunder.
Bob Avellini had taken the Bears to the playoffs two years before. Finks thought Vince Evans had potential. And the general manager had not given up on Mike Phipps, for whom he had traded a first-round pick. “We would be muddying the waters with another quarterback,” Finks told the others.
Then Finks expressed concern about the depth at running back behind Walter Payton. “Who’s the best running back left?” he asked. Their highest-rated remaining back was Willie McClendon from Georgia.
After some deliberation, Finks announced the Bears were taking McClendon. “Bill Tobin almost had apoplexy,” McGrane said before his death in 2015. “He was beside himself, sick he didn’t get Montana.”
Finks became a Hall of Famer, but it was not a Hall of Fame moment.
“Finks liked Montana, but he was human, too,” said McGrane, who also worked with Finks in Minnesota. “Finks would make picks out of his back pocket sometimes. He’d call it a hunch play.”
Joe Montana wasn’t a Bear because of a hunch
This is a cold reminder of how inexact and human the NFL draft truly is. Hindsight tells us that Montana was the obvious pick. The Bears cost themselves more Super Bowls in the 1980s for not making it. He ended up going to San Francisco and defeated Chicago in the NFC championship game twice. First in 1984 and again in 1988. How different would it have been had he sat on the opposite sideline?
He’d have played with an all-time great running back in Walter Payton and been able to lean on an all-time great defense. Yet because Finks had muddied the waters so much with other bad QB decisions, his psyched himself out to where he didn’t want to do it anymore. He felt the Bears had “enough” quarterbacks already. Just like many experts felt they had “enough” tight ends when Ryan Pace drafted Cole Kmet.
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