Chicago Bears: Is Mitch Trubisky following path of Alex Smith?

Is the Chicago Bears quarterback following a similar path of another former top draft pick?

In the 2005 NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears held the No. 4 overall pick and selected running back Cedric Benson out of the University of Texas. At the time, quarterback Aaron Rodgers was still on the board, but the Bears felt good about Rex Grossman (for reasons that still defy logic) and chose to bolster their backfield.

However, there was another quarterback needy team who passed on Rodgers that held the No. 1 overall pick. You may recall the San Francisco 49ers selecting Alex Smith out of the University of Utah. With the advantage of hindsight, Rodgers should have been the pick at No. 1 and the 49ers would obviously like to have another shot at that pick.

Similarly, it is starting to become abundantly clear that in the 2017 draft, with the No. 2 overall pick (after trading up) the Bears selection should have been Patrick Mahomes. However, they don’t have the benefit of hindsight, and Mitchell Trubisky was the consensus top-rated quarterback. It doesn’t take the sting out of the miss, but revisionist history isn’t fair either.

In each draft, the best quarterback was not the first one taken. In Rodgers case, he fell all the way to No. 24 while Mahomes fell to No. 10. Just like Smith, Trubisky is feeling the brunt of his general manager’s decision, despite not having any control over it.

Throughout his career, Smith was compared to Rodgers just as Trubisky is being measured against Mahomes. Fair or unfair, it’s the reality. Smith obviously never measured up to Rodgers and after eight mediocre seasons (one lost to injury) the 49ers let him go. As we know, he went on to have a good run in Kansas City under the tutelage of Andy Reid and Matt Nagy, enjoying his best statistical season by a mile in  2017.

While he never ended up an “elite” quarterback commensurate with his draft status, eventually he became a very good and serviceable quarterback with whom you can win a Super Bowl with a good enough defense.

Sound familiar? In many ways, it sounds like the current expectations fans have for Trubisky. It seems fans and pundits are resigning themselves to the fact that he will never be an elite quarterback and have dialed back expectations considerably.

He will set out this Monday night to prove the naysayers wrong, but if he doesn’t and continues down this path, you have to start to wonder whether he will enjoy his best years in another uniform as Smith did. Of course, that talk is premature but hopefully, Mitch turns it around soon and it never becomes a possibility.