Beware. There are a lot of people out there who call themselves Chicago Bears fans. Yet their words and actions make it seem like it’s the complete opposite. For example, Adam Rank of NFL.com is a true Bears fan. He doesn’t mind voicing his bias from time to time for his team but is still objective when the situation calls for it. Robert Mays of The Ringer on the other hand? Well his recent article, headlined by a wild Mitch Trubisky take, makes his statement that he’s a Bears fan ring a bit hollow.
So much about his article is questionable. He claims the team has been in decline the past couple of years. They went 12-4 literally two years ago. They dealt 2nd and 3rd rounders away for Anthony Miller and David Montgomery, making it sound like they were bad moves. This despite Miller playing pretty well his first two years and Montgomery having over 1,000 total yards as a rookie. He called Eddie Goldman overpriced, ignoring the inconvenient fact he’s the 17-highest paid defensive tackle in the league and also one of the best nose tackles in football.
Buster Skrine apparently got overpaid. Nevermind he’s making $600,000 less than Bryce Callahan who missed all of 2019 with injuries. D.J. Hayden, the former 1st round bust makes more than him too. So again where is the logic in this? Yet Mays’ hottest take was saved for the beginning of the article when he delivered this gem.
“But the moves that got the Bears to the top of the NFC North—and the subsequent ones designed to keep them there—were made under false pretenses. Like Jacksonville did with Blake Bortles, the Bears hitched their future to a quarterback that didn’t deserve the stake.”
If the Mitch Trubisky-Blake Bortles thing is necessary, at least do it right
It’s obvious what Mays was going for here. Bortles was a former top 5 pick who ended up busting. Trubisky is a former top 5 pick who appears to have ended up busting. Each had roller-coaster careers with moments of really good mixed too often with long streaks of bad. Except one could argue Trubisky, for all his flaws, is a better player than Bortles was. That aside, this isn’t what the article focused on.
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The criticism was leveled at the Bears for “hitching their future” to Trubisky. While it’s true they did draft him #2 overall and hoped he was their franchise guy, his situation isn’t anywhere close to the same as Bortles’. For one, the Bears didn’t hand him a three-year extension for $54 million as Jacksonville did. Hell, they didn’t even pick up his 5th-year option. Keep in mind the Jaguars did that after Bortles delivered a scintillating 3,600 yards with 21 TDs and 13 interceptions in 2017.
So painting the two situations as exactly the same is laughable. The career paths might be similar, but how the teams have handled them are polar opposites. It’s clear this entire article was just an attempt to rile up Bears fans.