In a pre-draft season that saw few things go unnoticed, the Bears’ interest in quarterback Mitchell Trubisky slipped through the cracks.
Trubisky seemed to indicate the same after the pick, but General Manager Ryan Pace admitted to having a private workout with Trubisky that the team was able to keep under wraps. That visit, conversations with Trubisky and scouting his play at North Carolina were enough to leave Pace and the team convinced that he was the right man for them.
During a press conference after the trade and pick, Pace was asked if he felt the 49ers may have been bluffing about other teams coming up to get Trubisky. Pace said he knew other teams were making calls about a trade and “maybe you call the bluff and you miss out on the player.”
“If we want to be great, you just can’t sit on your hands,” Pace said, via the Chicago Tribune. “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.”
Pace said Mike Glennon is the starter and that there’s no timeline for Trubisky to change that, although moving up to take a quarterback with the second overall pick starts an unofficial one because Pace set a course for the future of the franchise and his future with the franchise on Thursday night.