Why the Chicago Bears should extend Mitch Trubisky now

The Chicago Bears would be smart not to wait to extend Mitch Trubisky’s contract.

For years, the Chicago Bears have been trying to find their franchise quarterback. Since the days of Jim McMahon, there have been mostly ham and eggers, with a few one-year wonders sprinkled in. There was even the quarterback who everyone thought would finally be ‘the guy’ but who has gone on in retirement to suck worse than he did while playing in Chicago.

Ryan Pace, however, believes he found the franchise’s quarterback in Mitchell Trubisky, whom he traded up for in the 2017 NFL Draft.

Even with Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes in the same class, and the possibility that Pace could have traded back and still got one of those two players, Pace didn’t flinch. He made an aggressive move to trade up one spot with the San Francisco 49ers to ensure he did not lose out on Trubisky. Why?

Well, first and foremost, because the quarterback position is not only the most important position in football but likely in all of professional sports. Second, Pace had the conviction that Trubisky was his guy — the guy to take over the reins as the face of the franchise and lead the team in a pass-happy, quarterback-driven league.

To underscore the last point that this is a quarterback-driven league, one need only look at Russell Wilson‘s new contract with the Seattle Seahawks. Seattle agreed to a four-year extension with Wilson in which he will earn $140 million, and become the league’s highest-paid player. Each year, it seems the bar is reset. Last year it was Kirk Cousins, and this year, it’s Wilson. Next year, it could very well be Dak Prescott.

It raises the question, ‘should the Bears consider extending Trubisky now?’ Here are a couple of reasons it might make sense.