Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace says it will be an open competition for the starting quarterback job between Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky. Okay!
Get your popcorn ready, America. The Chicago Bears have themselves a quarterback competition.
For decades, the Bears have had no idea what they’re doing whatsoever at the quarterback position. We’re coming on almost a century since Sid Luckman was a star. For now, we’ve got two bottom-tier starters in Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky supposedly duking it out to be Matt Nagy’s righthand man in 2020. Can we PLEASE get this quarterback battle on HBO’s Hard Knocks?
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported on Friday morning Bears general manager Ryan Pace calling the upcoming quarterback battle as an “open competition”. Pace is the same man who traded up from No. 3 to No. 2 with the San Francisco 49ers to draft Trubisky over Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes in 2017. He also took on one of the worst contracts in football in Foles’ this spring.
Even though both quarterbacks have been to Pro Bowls and reached the postseason, they’re only going to be the fourth best quarterback in their own division, regardless of who wins the battle. Aaron Rodgers is better, Kirk Cousins is more consistent and Matthew Stafford is infinitely more talented than the two Bears’ signal-callers.
Trubisky was decent in 2018 for Chicago, while Foles has had two good runs when he was with the Philadelphia Eagles. Given that many of the coaches Foles has worked with in Philadelphia and during his brief stint with the Kansas City Chiefs are in Chicago, he might have the upper hand here. We have to remember Trubisky is Pace’s guy and not Nagy’s. This will get so freaking weird.
As the old saying goes, if you have two quarterbacks, it means you don’t have one. Any professional team that is willing to admit they are having an open competition means they have no confidence in the position group. On good teams, it is inferred who the starter is. The very nanosecond that line gets blurry, you need to move off the incumbent and get somebody else.
Trubisky is in the last year of his rookie deal with Chicago, while Foles has two more years left on his contract he signed last offseason with the Jacksonville Jaguars. There can’t possibly be a reason the Bears will give Trubisky a fifth-year option as a former first-round pick. Then again, he is Pace’s guy. He’s made some moves this offseason, that’s for sure. The Bears will be captivating.