A painful week of the Bears gushing about the quarterback they could have had will culminate in a three-hour, nationally televised example of what an egregious error it was to bypass Patrick Mahomes in favor of Mitch Trubisky.
Mahomes will make a rare stop Sunday at Soldier Field — the Chiefs won’t come back until 2028 — for Chicago’s first look at one of the NFL’s biggest stars. Mahomes almost certainly will deliver a performance that further convinces Bears fans of general manager Ryan Pace’s incredibly ill-fated pick, and that figures to be the dominant storyline in NBC’s broadcast.
The over/under for how long it will take the network to flash a graphic showing that the Bears took Trubisky at No. 2 and the Chiefs picked Mahomes at No. 10 in the 2017 draft, accompanied by their seismically disparate career stats, is 8.5 seconds. Bet the under.
Trubisky will be measured against Mahomes and Texans star Deshaun Watson forever, and the best thing he’s got going for him is that those two play on AFC teams. Imagine if he had to face one or both of them every season.
Watson, by the way, will come to town next season. Trubisky has that to look forward to, provided he’s still the Bears’ starter.
In 10 fewer NFL games and at one year younger, Mahomes has thrown 25 more touchdown passes, put up 10 more 300-yard games and has Trubisky by a whopping 25 points in career passer rating. If you’re trying to gauge that gap, 25 points is the difference between Tom Brady’s career rating and Rex Grossman’s.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid tried to reciprocate the Bears’ weeklong lovefest of Mahomes by pointing out Trubisky’s ‘‘pretty dang good’’ 334 yards passing last Sunday against the Packers, even though he posted a 65.4 rating.
‘‘He’s doing all right,’’ Reid said.
That’s quite polite and generous, but he’s not. ‘‘All right’’ would be a good goal for Trubisky in 2020.
The Mahomes-Trubisky competition, if it can be called that, already has been decided. Three seasons in, Trubisky has no shot at catching up to him. That goes for Watson, too, but Mahomes has been the flavor of the week at Halas Hall.
‘‘Special arm,’’ outside linebacker Khalil Mack said. ‘‘He looks like a fighter. You see it on the film: He’s breaking tackles and throwing the ball down the field. He keeps his eyes down the field.’’
Everything the Bears wish they had.
You had to wonder whether that thought registered with the Bears as they fawned over the reigning NFL most valuable player all week.
‘‘They had a heck of a year offensively, just breaking so many records,’’ coach Matt Nagy marveled about Mahomes’ 50-touchdown season in 2018.
There’s little doubt which quarterback Nagy would’ve wanted then and dreams about now. He was an assistant with the Chiefs when they traded up from No. 27 to grab Mahomes.
And it’s difficult to imagine defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano talking so reverently — fearfully, even — about facing Trubisky, as he did with Mahomes.
‘‘It’s really, really easy for him,’’ Pagano said. ‘‘I mean, it’s crazy. . . . He’s rare, he’s elite — whatever adjective you want to put on him. The arm talent is crazy.
‘‘He’s just a tremendous, tremendous player. His football intelligence has got to be off the charts. . . . He’s a smooth operator. It’s ‘Madden’ times 1,000.”
That’s what the Bears missed out on, and this is going to be the harshest reminder yet until Mahomes wins a Super Bowl. And that might not be far away.
