The Ryan Pace Bowl: Deshaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes clash in playoffs

The rest of the football world has waited years for this.

In Chicago, it’s another gut punch in a string of them since the 2017 draft.

Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson will collide in the playoffs for the first time, and even though it’ll be 500 miles away at Arrowhead Stadium, it’ll be flashing in your face on the flat screen in your living room.

It’ll be excruciating to watch the Chiefs and Texans play for a spot in the AFC title game, putting one of those quarterbacks a win away from the Super Bowl. It’ll spark anew the anger that flared when Mahomes dusted the Bears in his Soldier Field debut last month and openly mocked them for bypassing him.

Get used to it.

Mahomes and Watson will battle at the top of the NFL for the next decade-plus, and Chicago has little choice but to grin and bear it. If they meet often enough, maybe we’ll start calling it the Ryan Pace Bowl.

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They’re exceptional, and the league belongs to them for the foreseeable future. Mahomes already has an MVP, and Watson looks like he’ll get one soon. Their teams will always have a chance.

They’re everything Mitch Trubisky isn’t. And even if the Bears eventually dump Pace and bail on Trubisky, games like this will always be frustrating.

Watson and Mahomes, the two quarterbacks Pace didn’t want, are off to the best statistical starts in NFL history. They’re the only quarterbacks to post a triple-digit passer rating over their first three seasons and are two of 10 to throw for more than 70 touchdowns in that span. Mahomes is No. 1 in yards per attempt through three seasons at 9.2, and Watson is third at 8.2.

And at 24, a full year younger than Trubisky, they’re going to be here for a long time. Muttering about the 2017 draft during their playoff showdowns will become a Chicago tradition.

Those two are not just stat stackers, but unquestioned winners. They’ve gone a combined 48-20 as starters, and each has a playoff victory. Watson led the Texans to an overtime win last week with enviable plays at the end, and Mahomes makes the Chiefs arguably the most fearsome team in the field.

You whether Trubisky, who will never catch them, can stomach tuning in for a few minutes Sunday.

Chicago shares his queasiness.

As Mahomes and Watson spar at the top of the league, Trubisky sits at the bottom of it — literally, depending on the stat category.

His drastic regression sucked the air out of any overinflated confidence the Bears had in him coming off 2018, when he was serviceable enough to ride an elite defense to the playoffs and get a Pro Bowl invitation as an alternate in a year when all three NFC quarterbacks withdrew.

Trubisky closed his third season 28th in passer rating, 27th in touchdowns, 27th in yards per game and 32nd (last among qualifying quarterbacks) in yards per attempt. Mahomes and Watson were top-11 in every category.

It sets up an offseason in which Mahomes and Watson will sign record-breaking contract extensions while Chicago dreads the possibility of the Bears picking up Trubisky’s option for 2021.

Chicago Sun-Times

Pace said drafting Trubisky was about having “no regrets.” He’s left with nothing but them. He just doesn’t realize that yet. He said last week it’s too early to conclude that he got it wrong. It’s a career-defining mistake, and he needs so badly for Trubisky to be viable that it sounds like he’s in an alternate reality when he compares the trio.

“I think it’s just understanding that they’re all different,” Pace said. “It’s just case-by-case. There’s all different backgrounds and scenarios and situations they’re in. I think you’ve just got to recognize that.”

That part about them all being different is profoundly accurate.

Trubisky has seven 300-yard games — most were inefficient or against bad teams — in 41 career starts. For Mahomes, it’s his career average.

He toppled the Bears with a ho-hum 251 yards, two touchdown passes, a rushing touchdown and a 112.5 passer rating. It’s the kind of game that would earn Trubisky a verbal parade from Matt Nagy. Chiefs coach Andy Reid called it merely, “a good, solid performance.”

As much as it kills Chicago to see Mahomes soar, imagine how it sits with Nagy. He was a key figure on the Chiefs’ staff when they fell in love with Mahomes as a prospect at Texas Tech, then he took the job with the Bears and saw that Trubisky remained a major project just as he was as a one-year starter at North Carolina.

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When asked recently about Mahomes, especially the 50-touchdown season in 2018, Nagy replied, “It doesn’t surprise me.” When asked recently about Trubisky, the subject was his inability to read coverages. Nagy talked extensively about the work ahead, then circled back to the company line a few questions later by saying, “He’s not far.”

There’s an argument that Mahomes’ success could not have been predicted. Bears president Ted Phillips called him “an anomaly” last week. No one envisioned Mahomes winning the MVP his first season as a starter, but this wasn’t like the Patriots hitting jackpot on Tom Brady in the sixth round.

The Chiefs saw enough potential to trade up from 27th to 10th and take him ahead of Watson even though they were already a playoff team and had a competent quarterback in Alex Smith.

Likewise, the Texans gave up a future first-round pick to jump from No. 25 to No. 12 to secure Watson, a national champion and two-time Heisman Trophy finalist at Clemson. His coach said passing on him would be like “passing on Michael Jordan,” and while that’s a bit overblown, Pace certainly ended up with Sam Bowie.

The Bears, by the way, like to use Smith as a parable for Trubisky because he didn’t turn a corner until Year 7. In the modern NFL, that’s like waiting for a savings bond to mature. Mahomes, Watson and MVP-to-be Lamar Jackson were virtually instant hits. The upside is that if Trubisky is indeed on the Smith track, Chicago is almost halfway through the wait.

As Pace pleads for patience, his discards are closing in on the Super Bowl — the one the Bears set as their destination when they rolled into Bourbonnais last summer. That’s where this is going to get even worse. Watson and Mahomes are great enough to end their teams’ droughts, and watching a quarterback deliver that when the Bears know they could’ve had him will be the harshest reminder of how long it’s been since 1985.