Former Bears quarterback (among many other teams), Mark Sanchez, knows all too well what it feels like to be a first-round bust.
After being selected by the Jets with the fifth-overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, Sanchez failed to develop into the franchise quarterback New York had hoped he’d be after his standout final season at USC.
Sanchez, whose career spanned 10 seasons and five teams, spent the 2017 season with the Bears and served as a mentor (which may be part of the problem) to then-rookie first-rounder, Mitch Trubisky.
Now, four seasons later, Trubisky is trekking the same path Sanchez took as a first-round disappointment. He was benched in the third quarter of Week 3’s comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons and officially lost his starting job to Nick Foles less than 24 hours later.
According to Sanchez, the Bears didn’t handle the situation properly.
“I just, I thought it was so crappy,” Sanchez said on the Pat McAfee show. “He was playing OK. He was playing pretty well. I mean the interception he threw? Unless he just missed a bunch of run checks that we don’t know about, I mean you could go back and watch the tape but they were very competitive.
“They were in the game and they were playing Atlanta who finds a way to lose these games in the third and fourth quarter, right? Why hit the panic button after one interception?
“So, that really shocked me, and it was really unfortunate.”
It’s hard to take Sanchez’s opinion seriously here. The decision to bench Trubisky wasn’t because of one pass. It was because of more than three seasons of poor reads, inaccurate throws, and inconsistency.
The difference this year, and with that throw, is that the Bears have a viable player on the bench to replace him with. That wasn’t the case in 2017, when Sanchez was part of the quarterback room.
Foles proved Nagy’s decision to bench Trubisky was the right one. He rallied the Bears to a victory with three fourth-quarter touchdowns, something any informed Bears fan can reasonably say wouldn’t have happened with Trubisky behind center.
Sanchez is a fan of Trubisky. We get it. But it’s time to move on, just like the Bears did.
