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Could Mitch Trubisky go top 3? Browns, 49ers, Bears all need QB help
The news that North Carolina QB Mitch Trubisky was leaving school early to enter the 2017 NFL draft was not stunning, even amid reports that he was strongly considering a return.
After all, it’s difficult to pass up a chance to be a first-round pick after the college advisory committee stamped him with a Round 1 grade in mid-December. But the time elapsed showed that Trubisky at least was mulling whether he was ready for the jump.
This is a player who started sporadically prior to this season but could not beat out Marquise Williams in 2015. (Williams was an undrafted free agent who signed with the Green Bay Packers but lost a spot to Joe Callahan from Wesley College. Williams is currently not on an NFL roster .)
In his one year as the starter, Trubisky put up beefy numbers — 30 touchdowns, six interceptions and 68 percent completions. He has good size (6-foot-4, 222 pounds) — but had a few clunkers along the way. He started the season with a poor performance against Georgia, struggled badly in the hard rain against Virginia Tech and finished his college career with an up-and-down affair in the Sun Bowl loss to Stanford.
But turn on the tape against Florida State and you see why NFL teams are intrigued. Trubisky was nearly perfect that game. What stood out — as well as against Miami (Fla.) and Pitt — was Trubisky’s performance in end-of-the-half situations, showing poise and precision. Want a mix of the good and bad in one game? Heck, make it one quarter; the final 15 minutes of the N.C. State game offered a smattering of each.
Has he done enough to warrant a top-three pick? After all, that’s a gauntlet of quarterback-needy teams with the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers and Chicago Bears to kick things off in April. That’s going to be a fascinating question in which the QB class leaves something to be desired on a few levels.
Granted, Clemson QB Deshaun Watson has begun to rebuild his stock with a strong finish prior to Monday’s national championship game in what could be a massive measuring stick for his NFL grade. And the influx of underclassmen — Trubisky joins Watson, DeShone Kizer, Patrick Mahomes, Brad Kaaya and surprise entry Jerod Evans — has made this group deeper, if nothing else.
(In our first mock-draft crack of the new year, we placed Trubisky at No. 13 to the Arizona Cardinals as a watch-and-wait project behind Carson Palmer … who did that his rookie season, interestingly enough.)
Here are Trubisky’s pros and cons.
Overall on the plus side, his accuracy and arm talent appear good to very good, and he has shown poise and toughness at times. He’s also a good athlete for the position, able to move around and outside the pocket to throw or run. Although Trubisky might not have any elite, once-in-a-generation trait that makes the hair on your neck stand up when you watch him, he has some NFL-caliber, “wow” throws for sure.
On the negative side, he also hasn’t always shown that innate knack for smelling out pressure (ahem, Stanford game) and escaping it, even though he can make plays after shaking loose from rushers, which is a tough thing for many quarterbacks to do consistently well. Trubisky played in a high-percentage, one- or two-read passing offense with great talent at receiver and a great back behind him, so some of his production is manufactured. He also will slip into some mini-funks in games and miss some throws he normally makes.
There were plenty of top-five picks in the fairly recent past who fit this mold, such as Alex Smith and Matt Ryan, but also others with more special physical traits (Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert come to mind) who failed to develop keen passing instincts. Ryan Tannehill is a good example (or Kirk Cousins, if you want to use a non-first-rounder), though, of a gifted thrower and athlete who developed over time eventually and showed more polish and feel for an NFL passing game.
The Browns, 49ers and Bears all will do extensive work on Trubisky, and if they grow to love him between now and the draft, they should not hesitate to take him that high. There are a few roadblocks. The first two staffs are going through changes, with the Browns potentially replacing QB coach Pep Hamilton if he joins Jim Harbaugh’s staff at Michigan and the 49ers in need of a total overhaul with a new general manager and head coach. It appears the Bears are likely to keep their coaching staff largely intact.
All three teams are loaded with salary-cap space in 2017 as well; the Browns and 49ers lead the NFL currently, with nearly $200 million between them. So finding a way to land a veteran quarterback, either by trade or free agency, remain possibilities. There could be several available, from the enticing (Tony Romo, Tyrod Taylor, Jimmy Garoppolo) to the bridge variety (A.J. McCarron, Colin Kaepernick, Jay Cutler … Palmer?) to the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency options (Ryan Fitzpatrick, Case Keenum and others).
Many have noted that Trubisky makes sense to the Browns for a few reasons. They have the draft ammo, owning the first and 12th overall picks, as well as two second-rounders. Even if they pass on him with the top pick and Trubisky makes it out of the top five, they could ensure they get him after that if they want him. Trubisky is a native of Mentor, Ohio (25 miles from Cleveland) and grew up a Browns fans, although we know how the regional thing has gone before with them with Brady Quinn and Charlie Frye.
Both the Browns and Bears also will get firsthand looks at a number of QB prospects when they coach the Senior Bowl teams in two weeks. Trubisky is not eligible for the game, but Watson reportedly is and could possibly end up in the game. He’d be on the Browns’ South Team roster if Watson declared, which could tilt their opinion of him.
That said, the Dallas Cowboys coached Carson Wentz in that game last year, owned the fourth overall pick and saw no need to slide up in the draft to secure him. Instead, they settled on a quarterback who played on the squad coached by the Jacksonville Jaguars. That would be Dak Prescott, of course.
We don’t yet know if Trubisky will be worth a top-five pick, but it was around this time last year that the top-five buzz for Wentz cranked up. There have been other late risers who went that high, such as Blake Bortles, Cam Newton, Mark Sanchez and, heck, even Philip Rivers.
So don’t discount the hype train pushing Trubisky — a very talented but flawed prospect with an incomplete body of work — into that rare air when it’s all said and done. Stranger prospects have been taken off the board that high before.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
