Patriots, Bears, and 3 others NFL teams that should tank for Trevor Lawrence
NFC. North. player. 57. Scouting Report. Pick Analysis. Chicago Bears. 3
Realistically, even if it’s understated, the heat is surely on Bears’ head coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace to win this year. A fall to 8-8 last year from 12-4 in 2018 has essentially ended the Mitch Trubisky experience, and the trade for Nick Foles was a lateral move to add competition under center. Take away the Super Bowl MVP run and a couple other pop-ups, and Foles could easily be considered worse than Trubisky.
Foles and Trubisky are going to compete for the starting job, with Foles as the easy favorite right now. Talk about a pillow fight, even if was sure to be a normal training camp and preseason. It’s pretty safe to assume both will start games for the Bears during the 2020 season.
If things go downhill fast, the Bears may look like they’re tanking this year without actually trying to do it.
The Bears have struggled to find a quarterback for virtually as long as they’ve existed (which goes back to the dawn of the NFL), and they’ve outright botched plenty of attempts to address the void. When Jay Cutler, Sid Luckman and Jim McMahon are clearly the best quarterbacks in franchise history, in whatever order they can subjectively be placed, that’s a systemic problem.
Pace’s job security is fading, but he wouldn’t be the first general manager to get another crack at drafting a potential quarterback of the future in a fairly short window of time. If Nagy can coax good production out of Foles and/or Trubisky, even independent of wins and losses this year, he could be redeemed as an offensive mind and take heat off himself.
Tanking a season is hard to do in a NFL business where wins and losses are the ultimate indicator. But a bad start this year could push the Bears to do it, if only to end their quest for a young franchise quarterback until further notice.
“Tank For Trevor” could become a rallying cry for Bears’ fans this year. Pace and Nagy won’t want to do it if it means they’d do it to secure Lawrence for their replacements. But some kind of assurance they won’t be fired for going 3-13 could bring the idea into the light.