The Chicago Bears deciding to pass on both Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes in the 2017 Draft will haunt them for a while.
But even worse, it sounds like as they went through the pre-draft process they might have made a borderline inexplicable decision.
On Friday night, Watson, who was picked by and remains with the Houston Texans, tweeted that the Bears actually never spoke to him in the lead up of the draft.
The bears NEVER ONCE talked to me.. https://t.co/nMX7JKW99P
— Deshaun Watson (@deshaunwatson) May 9, 2020
The news was stunning, as such an oversight would warrant firing pretty much every member of Chicago’s football ops department. Watson was a downright electric quarterback at Clemson, and despite injury concerns he was regarded as a top quarterback in the draft. Not even talking to him would be ridiculous.
But the “Rich Eisen Show” dug up some footage that revealed Watson said he did talk to someone from the Bears.
“I’ve talked to some teams on the phone, Chicago, Baltimore and a whole bunch of different teams have checked in on me,” Watson said.
From our vault: We love @deshaunwatson but it does appear he did talk to the @ChicagoBears at least once before the 2017 #NFLDraft ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/B8c6fiyY6z
— Rich Eisen Show (@RichEisenShow) May 9, 2020
However, there is a possible explanation as to why Watson might’ve said that.
Not exactly. Explain it to you same way I did for Doug. Every year, players are instructed by their agent to leverage the media so that teams feel that there is more competition in the market place than there actually is.
— quincy_avery (@Quincy_Avery) May 9, 2020
Watson liked the tweet, by the way.
There probably were heaps of teams that talked to Watson during the pre-draft process. Some probably were just doing due diligence, while others might’ve thought they’d have a legitimate shot at him falling to them. Regardless, you could forgive Watson for possibly forgetting that he had spoken to someone in the organization, if that actually was the way things unfolded.
But the past is in the past. The Bears made the regrettable decision of picking Mitchell Trubisky, while Watson has gone on to thrive in Houston.
