It’s been quite a fall since 2018 for the Chicago Bears. You remember the season, the one in which a young and promising second-year quarterback — Mitch Trubisky — led the team to a division championship and a home playoff game.
The sky was the limit for a team with a ferocious defense and an offense that was advancing to Level 202 in its second season under Matt Nagy.
What’s unfolded since 2019 has been nothing short of an absolute disaster, even if back-to-back years with an 8-8 record would suggest otherwise. A .500 season isn’t a complete embarrassment, but that’s not the point.
Trubisky busted. The defense lost its mojo. And the offense that Nagy was supposed to lead into a modern era of high-flying stats and points has devolved into something resembling the days of John Fox and Dowell Loggains.
And there’s the general manager issue, too. Ryan Pace can’t escape the haunting shadows of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, the two quarterbacks he passed on for Trubisky, who’s now riding the bench behind Josh Allen in Buffalo.
Entering a win-or-else year, it felt like the 2021 offseason was going to be different. An aggressive move for a quarterback was coming. It had to, right? The rumors of Russell Wilson — real, legitimate rumors of the Bears trying to trade for him — turned into an uninspiring one-year contract for Andy Dalton, who the Bears touted as ‘QB1’ in a bizarre and borderline insulting tweet on Wednesday.
QB1. pic.twitter.com/TuyrAcpoCM
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) March 25, 2021
That tweet was all it took to set Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd off on a tangent on his radio show Thursday.
“The Bears don’t know what they’re doing,” Cowherd said on “The Herd.”
“We know Andy Dalton was not their first choice. Everybody knows that. Chicago knows that. Fans know that … This is an organization that kept telling us how much they love Mitch Trubisky and then bailed on him the minute they could.”
Look, Cowherd can be a complete blowhard at times but when he’s right, he’s right. There’s simply no defending the Bears and their bizarre decision to share that tweet, which was the butt of many, many football jokes over the last day or so.
The 2021 draft will be here very soon, and it’ll offer the Bears one last chance to make a powerplay at quarterback this offseason. But they won’t be able to land one at the 20th pick. Yes, Pace will be forced to make another first-round trade to land his guy. Yikes.
Bears fans have no choice but to take their bumps and bruises over the next few months and until the 2021 season kicks off. This is the last and potentially most painful lap of the Trubisky marathon (yes, he’s patient zero).
It’ll all be over soon.