Revised mock draft: Why Deshaun Watson will only end up with Bears via trade

Mitchell Trubisky's makeup may take a little time to discern at the NFL level. Ryan Pace? No, his nature has now been pretty emphatically revealed as perhaps one of the most aggressive general managers currently doing business in the NFL. How good Pace is, well, that's a whole other discussion that doesn't really move to the fore until next September. But right now Pace is safe from any accusations of timidity at the top of his drafts.

"If we want to be great, you just can't sit on your hands," Pace stated after round one was over. "There are times when you've got to be aggressive and when you have conviction on a guy, you can't sit on your hands. I just don't want to be average around here; I want to be great and these are the moves you have to make."

Not quite two weeks ago, the strongest current flowing around the Bears was that they were intent on securing a quarterback in the 2017 draft, even if it meant trading up to ensure it happening rather than risk another team jumping over them for their sought-after quarterback. That came to pass on Thursday night when the Bears, who'd decided Mitchell Trubisky was their quarterback of choice, heard from the San Francisco 49ers that a team was angling to jump the Bears and grab Trubisky at the 49ers' spot at No. 2.

Pace had established last draft that he was ultimately about going what he perceives to be elite quality rather than simple quantity when he gave up the 11th-overall pick and a fourth-round pick to vault over the New York Giants and select rush-linebacker Leonard Floyd. Pace now has demonstrated his quality-over-quantity predisposition to an exponentially greater degree when he gave up, in addition to that No. 3 pick, third- and fourth-round picks this year and a third next year to go up just one spot rather than lose Trubisky.

And Pace has pounded a steady beat about addressing the quarterback position. Which he has, with three new QB's on the roster going into the run-up to training camp.

"The most important position in all of sports is quarterback, and I don't think you're ever a great team until you address the position and you address it right," Pace said. "I think everybody should respect that. We're addressing the quarterback position, we're being aggressive with that position because it's the most important position in sports."

Did Pace overpay for Trubisky? Maybe; let's see what the kid becomes. By comparison, in the 2012 draft the Browns switched places with the Minnesota Vikings, moving up from No. 4 to No. 3 also at a cost of four picks: that No. 3 plus fourth-, fifth- and seventh-round picks in that draft. Not nearly in the price tag for the Bears to make the Trubisky grab.

But the Cleveland trade was for a running back (Trent Richardson); this was for a franchise quarterback. And a one-slot move from No. 3 to No. 2 is a little pricier than from No. 4 to No. 3 to begin with. And there was the sense that Pace honestly didn't care what the price was in this case.

"Once you have conviction on a guy, you have to do it," Pace said. "You have to be aggressive and do it. The comparison for me is always in free agency. You don't really know. You set a price on a player, whether it's a financial price or draft picks. And if you have conviction on a player, you go get him. Because the alternative is, you don't know. Hey, maybe you call the bluff and you miss out on the player. And in this case, I wasn't willing to take that risk."

Regardless of the price or even the outcome of the deals, the significance of what all this says about Pace cannot be overstated. Because he clearly is very comfortable indeed with extreme risk.

"Ceiling" vs. "floor" guys

For one thing, where former GM Jerry Angelo operated from a "floor" philosophy, looking for a player with an apparent solid at-the-very-least-he'll-be-OK evaluation, Pace has now gone for "ceiling" players in all three of his No. 1's – a sort-of, "Hey, this guy could really be GREAT!" Kevin White was far from polished; Floyd had been a jack-of-all-trades at Georgia, which diluted and obscured some of his pure rush results; and now Trubisky, with one year as a starter and all of 13 starts. It was apparent when the Bears signed Mike Glennon over re-signing Brian Hoyer than Pace covets upside. And now this? All about upside.

The quality-over-quantity philosophy sounds like it should be obvious, but it isn't. Draft chiefs covet quantities of picks for purposes of giving themselves more chances of being right.

Pace likes picks as much as the next GM. But he also is not inclined toward "safe" picks and even just being "safe" in general. His massive investment of draft capital Thursday night points to a willingness to go all-in on the conclusions of his scouts, coaches and himself (he went to a Trubisky game himself at North Carolina last Tar Heels season). Trubisky had one workout with the Bears besides his Combine interview, so "I didn't see that coming at all," he conceded, establishing himself as right there with every draftnick who hazard'ed doing a mock.

Job security? Probably

The move also is consistent with the patience that Chairman George McCaskey voiced during the recent owners meetings. Not that another dismal season doesn't take coaches and GM's to the brink of the abyss, but Trubisky as a quarterback is not viewed as a this-season impact player; and the departed third- and fourth-round picks may contribute this year but they'll do it for the 49ers, not the Bears.

Meaning: Pace and his staff, including the coaches, appear to have been willing to give up three potential starters as early as this season in order to land someone who starts his Bears career sitting behind Glennon, to whom the Bears just gave $18.5 million guaranteed over the next two years.

"John [Fox] and I are arm-and-arm in all these decisions," Pace said. "So we talked about this thoroughly and we're connected on this. John is just as excited as I am. So when you have an opportunity to get a quarterback of this caliber, you can't pass on it. So we're good."

The Bears weren't the only ones feeling a quarterback urgency surge. Three quarterbacks – Trubisky, Pat Mahomes to Kansas City at 10, Deshaun Watson to Houston at 12 – were taken in span of the first 12 picks, this from what was widely rated a mediocre quarterback class. And any sense Pace had that something big was rumbling behind him in the draft order appears amply validated, and this did not include the Cleveland Browns, also believed to be the team trying to get Trubisky ahead of the Bears. Teams traded up to get all three of those quarterbacks, and Pace felt he knew the landscape just judging from his own incoming calls at No. 3.

"I knew there were teams inquiring about going up," Pace said. "There were teams calling me, at our pick, wanting to come up. So you could feel that all around us.'

"Those were teams interested in a quarterback?

"For sure," Pace said, nodding. "Yeah. 100 percent on that."

Source: www.bing.com