“Hi Deshaun……This is the Chicago Bears….*Click*”
Deshaun Watson at 25 years old is undoubtedly an elite quarterback. After two straight seasons of making the Pro Bowl in 2018 and 2019, Deshaun Watson was able to take his game to another level posting career highs in passing yards & passing touchdowns while also posting a career low in interceptions in 2020. He accomplished all of that without the help of All-Pro receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who was traded for half-a running back and a second-round pick that would later turn into Ross Blacklock. Right; I haven’t heard of Blacklock either. The point is, the Houston Texans haven’t done their franchise quarterback any favors this season; despite Watsons’ stellar play, the Texans went 4–12 this year, and now one year removed from his first playoff win, Watson wants out of Houston. This is mostly due to the lack of disrespect he felt from the Texans Organization as it pertains to the Texans ongoing coaching search. Watson felt he should be included in all things involving the Texans since he is the Franchise, but now, he is in search of a new franchise to lead.
What franchise wouldn’t take a chance on Deshaun Watson? Besides the handful of teams with either elite quarterbacks or young cornerstones like the Chiefs, Packers, Bengals, Bills, Cardinals, Chargers, or Bucs, every other team should be calling the Texans seeing what their asking price is for Watson. If the Texans are smart, they would ask for multiple first-round picks for Watson, and if the Chicago Bears are smart, they would hang up the phone and never call again. This is no knock-on Watson by any means, but rather an indictment on the Bears inept franchise. The Bears have never had a franchise quarterback in the Super Bowl Era. Mitch Trubisky, who is the highest drafted Quarterback in Bears history, hasn’t been as good as what he was advertised to be by Bears General Manager, Ryan Pace. He also had the distinction of being in the same draft class as Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, and being drafted ahead of both Superstars. So why shouldn’t they take a chance on a guy who could be considered the best in their franchise history?
Both Deshaun Watson and the Chicago Bears have the same aspirations, winning a Super Bowl and becoming world champs. If they want to accomplish the one common goal that everybody associates with the NFL, they would stay away from each other. Adding Deshaun Watson wouldn’t solve the on-going problems that the Bears have. If the Chicago Bears were just a Quarterback away from being a championship team, then I would be all for giving up multiple first-round picks. The Bears were this caliber of team two seasons ago, before their incredible 12–4 2018 season that ended, in them losing in the divisional round, to the Nick Foles’ led Eagles. During that offseason they traded draft picks for All-Pro, Khalil Mack, which turned a Top 10 Defense into the best Defensive Unit that season, which is what ultimately got them to the playoffs that year. The difference in that Bears team from 2018 and the team that’s currently constructed, are miles apart, so where should I start?
The coaching staff in 2018 was elite. We had one of the top offensive play-callers in newly hired, Head Coach, Matt Nagy, paired with one of the best Defensive Coordinators in Vic Fangio. Following that season Vic Fangio would become the Head Coach of the Denver Broncos. We also had an Outside Linebacker Coach by the name of Brandon Staley, who would leave with Vic Fangio to Denver and eventually become the Head Coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. So, get this straight; in 2018 the Chicago Bears staff would be comprised of two future Head Coaches along with Nagy. You couldn’t expect them to improve with loosing three head coaching minds to one in their staff, even though they did do some due diligence by bringing in well-respected, former Head Coach in Chuck Pagano, to be the team’s new Defensive Coordinator. It still was a downgrade over Fangio.
With the slight downgrade in coaching, particularly on Defense, this led to the slight downgrade in play from the entire Defense. While the Bears Defense isn’t to blame for ANY of the negativity surrounding the Bears, I would be blind to not notice they have taken a step back from that 2018 Defensive play. With mostly the same starters, they are just playing considerably worse than they did in 2018. Besides Roquan Smith, all of the returning starters, on the Defense were worse, and they are only getting older. How long can we expect this Defense to remain elite? A question I really don’t have an answer for, and time is ticking. Now to the REAL pitfall for this Bears team, and the area Deshaun would be able to help the most, the Offense.
We wouldn’t even be having this discussion if Pace would’ve drafted the right guy in 2017. Pace inability to evaluate the quarterback position led him to drafting Trubisky over guys like Watson and Mahomes. He was so convinced that Mitch was the best QB coming out into the draft that he essentially gave away picks to move up 1 SPOT, just to draft him. Then just a year later he proceeds to hire an offensive-minded coach in Matt Nagy, as the Head Coach to help “fix” Mitch Trubisky. Imagine trying to fix someone who you had high regards for just a year earlier. Nagy gets to Chicago eager to work with a young up and coming quarterback, just to find out he isn’t very good and can’t run his offensive system.
Despite all those things Nagy, in his first season, appears to do just that, in a more simplified version of the Kansas City Chiefs Offense. He leads the Bears to a 12–4 record that season. What has happened between then and now, that has Bears fans rallying for Deshaun Watson? We didn’t realize that season was just the ground floor of Nagy’s offense, it would become more complicated, as the seasons went on and as the Offense grows, so should Trubisky, but that never happened. Instead as the Offense became more complex, and Trubisky remained the same. The Offensive line is considerably worse than the one we had in 2018. At least then, we were able to establish the run with that O-line, which aided Trubisky’ development. This current group of O-lineman are average at best. This caused the entire offense to rely on a non-franchise quarterback to make plays.
If I’m Deshaun I wouldn’t trust The Bears front office to build a championship team around him, they didn’t even recognize Watson as the better Quarterback back in 2017 so they must be incompetent. I know for certain Pace wants to unwrite his wrong at the QB position, but not at the expense of making him look worse than he already does. This would be the case if he would trade for Deshaun Watson, whose asking price would likely be too steep for the Bears. The Bears would likely have to give up three First-Round picks in a trade offer, along with a key player, most likely on the Defensive side of the ball, just to compete with the trade packages the Jets and Dolphins have to offer.
If the Bears haven’t learned anything from trading for Jay Cutler years back, they should learn that if your team isn’t just a “Quarterback away” from winning a Super Bowl, trading valuable asset could leave you limited with how you can upgrade your team. Those Jay Cutler Bear’s, much like these 2020 Bears, have a now aging Defense, with a good running back, but not much else on offense; especially if they don’t resign Allen Robinson. By the time we got the requisite offensive pieces around Jay Cutler, the Defense was on its last leg and we never really were true contenders during that period. We saw how the Jay Cutler Era ended in Chicago, and even though Watson is drastically better than Cutler, he should want more help around him to try to succeed.
If I were Deshaun, my top three choices of teams to go to would be, Dolphins, 49ers, and Colts but definitely not the Bears. Pace would be wise to explore cheaper options as well, because the asking price for Watson is too high, especially for a team that hasn’t had its share of high draft picks in recent years. If Pace were to complete the trade for Watson, he most likely won’t have the draft capital or the cap space to build a Super Bowl team around him for the next 3–5 years. Better options for the Bears would be exploring Mathew Stafford and Sam Darnold trades. With these trades, they wouldn’t have to give up nearly as much draft capital, and would still be competitive for seasons to come while not mortgaging their foreseeable future away. This is a win-win for both sides, if the Bears and Deshaun Watson would just stay away from each other. Imagine me saying these words before the 2017 draft… Ohh…“What could’ve been Bears ?” *Sigh*
