Chicago Bears: ESPN 1000 story about 2017 draft is horrifying

By now, you know all about the horrors that come from the 2017 NFL Draft for the Chicago Bears. They selected Mitchell Trubisky with the second overall pick after trading up from pick three and left Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes on the board. It was a mistake that could keep the Bears from ever taking advantage of this window. It is something that the media is going to clown them for over the next few decades. When Ryan Pace ultimately gets fired, it will trace back to that exact moment.

The story of the Chicago Bears messing up the 2017 NFL Draft gets worse and worse every day.

ESPN 1000 is a delightful radio station. It is locally in the Chicagoland area and is perfect for those of us who love sports. Well, David Kaplan was on his show “Kap and J-Hood” on Thursday morning when he shared a story that he was told by Kansas City Chiefs radio announcer, Mitch Holthus. Kaplan asked Holthus to recap exactly what happened on that fateful night back in 2017.

Holthus shared that the GM of the Chiefs, Brett Veach, is best friends with Matt Nagy who was their offensive coordinator at the time. Nagy and Veach played football together at the University of Delaware and then worked with each other in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. The two of them decided that they really wanted Patrick Mahomes out of the three quarterbacks.

The person with the final decision was Andy Reid. Nagy was instructed by Reid to turn a scouting report on all three quarterbacks. He knew Trubisky was a project with good talent, Watson was a proven winner and great player that had injury worries, and he called Mahomes a “generational talent” and a “must get”. Reid still needed more convincing so he had a five-hour meeting with Mahomes to talk football and watch film amongst other things. When they came out of the meeting and the rest, as they say, is history.

Meanwhile, up in Chicago, Ryan Pace did what he did without any consultation with the coach, scouts, or anything like that. It is a real shame but it shows how dysfunctional the Bears are compared to other organizations. The Chiefs had lots of collaboration before the final decision was made and the Bears had little to no due process. Now, the Chiefs have a generation quarterback that has been to three straight AFC title games, two straight Super Bowls, and has a Super Bowl title/MVP. He also has a regular-season MVP.

It is crazy to hear stories like this but they all make too much sense. The Bears are not very good and this draft is the biggest reason why. A lot of people believe that they are a team that would be a Super Bowl contender if they landed a great quarterback. Well, the Chiefs are great and the Bears are lousy because of the way each team does their business. If things don’t change, neither will the results.