The Bears start their kind of, sort of search for competition for Mitch Trubisky

How much do you want to bet that the Bears won’t sign or acquire Teddy Bridgewater, Derek Carr, Tom Brady or anyone near that level?

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The Bears once again are pinning their hopes on Mitch Trubisky. Where are he and they going? We’re about to find out.

Quarterback Mitch Trubisky leaves the field after the Bears’ last game of 2019, a 21-19 victory over the Vikings.

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

On Saturday, the Sun-Times generously analyzed 20 veteran quarterbacks for the Bears as the team searches for someone to “push’’ Mitch Trubisky in 2020. The story ran 1,800 words, and as I read it, I kept asking myself: “Shouldn’t Ryan Pace have to pay for the labor behind this journalistic effort? The research? The writing? The pain and suffering?’’

A dollar a word and an extra $50 for any mention of Joe Flacco, Josh Rosen or Taysom Hill sounds about right.

Ah, the continued cost and passed-on misery of the general manager’s ill-fated decision to take Trubisky with the second overall pick in the 2017 draft. Anybody who had to watch the Bears’ offense last season is still paying for it. It’s a kind of trickle-down effect, and not a pleasant kind.

We’ve had a respite from the wall-to-wall Mitch coverage of the 2019 season. It’s been nice. We’ve been able to find peace in Jim Boylen’s late-game timeouts and Tom Ricketts’ luxury-tax phobia. OK, maybe there hasn’t been peace, but there has been lower-level frustration.

The party’s over. We’re back on the clock with Mitch now.

The NFL Combine takes place this week in Indianapolis, and even though the Bears won’t find an immediate solution to their Trubisky difficulties there, the annual poking and prodding of rookies will restart the Mitch conversation. The Bears don’t have a pick until the second round. Given the other holes they have on their team, it’s unlikely they’re going to use a higher pick on a quarterback who can’t immediately compete with the incumbent.

Free agency and the trade market are the better bets.

At the end of last season, Pace said he expected Trubisky to be the starting quarterback in 2020. The truly disconcerting thing about the declaration was that he meant it.

“Mitch is our starter,” he said. “We believe in Mitch and we believe in the progress that he’s going to continue to make.”

The concern here is that, out of stubbornness, Pace and coach Matt Nagy will take a pass on a veteran quarterback who can make the Bears good enough to be a playoff team again. If the two men are serious about winning, they won’t be looking for someone to “push’’ Trubisky. They’ll be looking for someone to replace Trubisky.

That means someone like Teddy Bridgewater, Derek Carr or, yes, Tom Brady.

How much do you want to bet that the Bears won’t sign or acquire Bridgewater, Carr, Brady or anyone near that level?

When training camp opens up at Halas Hall in July after 18 years in Bourbonnais, it will be business as usual, with Trubisky at quarterback and the Pace-Nagy tag team gushing about the strides he made in the offseason. Some interpreted Pace’s “Mitch is our quarterback’’ proclamation at an end-of-season news conference in December as words meant to protect Trubisky’s feelings. Of course the Bears will bring in big-time competition at quarterback, the true believers reasoned.

I saw it the other way — that Pace meant exactly what he said, that Trubisky will be the starter in 2020 and that we’re all doomed. Anything less from the general manager would have been an acknowledgment of failure on the his part and, thus, a real blow to his plans for continued employment.

Pace is too tied to Trubisky for there to be a real quarterback competition in camp. So if you’re reading into this that an NFL franchise is being held hostage by one man’s gamble on a player, you are reading correctly.

If Pace wanted to trade for the Raiders’ Carr, how would you react if you were Bears chairman George McCaskey? I’d probably respond by saying, “Good idea, and once you’re finished finalizing the deal, you can clear out your desk.’’

As you can see, it’s a tortured web. The Bears need to find a better quarterback, but the man who would be in charge of finding a better quarterback might lose his job if he finds one. It’s only February, and my headache is starting to return.

If I leave the door ajar for the possibility that Trubisky will turn the corner in 2020, then I’m playing right into the Bears’ hands. That’s what they want everyone to believe will happen. No, they need to find a quarterback who is better than Trubisky, can win the job in camp and help the team get to the postseason.

With some help from the Sun-Times, they now have their list. Where’s the combat pay for our writer?

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