Former Bear Jason McKie Didn't Want the Bears To Draft Trubisky

The reactions to the Mitch Trubisky draft pick by experts and fans are common knowledge at this point. It was largely a mixed response. Most of it involved either surprise, anger, despair, or a mixture of those three. The Chicago Bears have the highest pick they've held since 1972 and they use it on a quarterback barely a month after signing another, Mike Glennon, to a sizable $18.5 million deal. Turns out former players had the same reaction, including Bears fullback Jason McKie. The member of the 2006 Super Bowl team has kept close tabs on his favorite franchise since retiring seven years ago. Like everybody else he was excited about the prospect of getting a true difference-maker for the roster this year. Jack M. Silverstein of SB Nation sat down to speak with him and soon the conversation came around to what transpired. McKie explained how he emotionally processed things. Suffice to say he was not happy when the pick came through and it was Trubisky.

Former fullback Jason McKie had eyes for somebody else in Bears draft

"So when the Bears drafted him, was I upset? Yes. But after I sat back and really analyzed what they did, I give them credit for actually taking a shot at the quarterback position, a position that has needed to be fixed here in Chicago for a long time. Now you have two guys with the potential for being great as opposed to having none.

Why were you upset when they drafted Trubisky?

Honestly, because I wanted them to take a different player. I really liked Jamal Adams from LSU. I felt like he was a day one starter. I think he’s going to be a future perennial Pro Bowler. And he is the quarterback of the secondary. I felt like with Chicago, we haven’t had that type of player since Mike Brown and Chris Harris back there. Those guys are real cerebral, real smart guys who made great plays all over the field. We haven’t had that type of safety, or that type of consistency, and I felt like Jamal Adams could have brought that.

But at the end of the day, after analyzing what Pace did, am I upset? Not really. Maybe upset at how he went and traded all of his picks to do it, but he made up for it and got some of those picks back. He picked a quarterback who he felt could make a difference, so I give him credit for that."

Bucking tradition

Like many Bears fans, McKie is well aware of the ongoing problems this franchise has had at safety. No Pro Bowlers since 2005. A run of mediocre or injury prone names over the past decade plus. Adams was a widespread favorite in the scouting community. Many projected him in mock drafts to Chicago. It seemed like such an obvious match. Instead GM Ryan Pace went in a direction nobody has gone for well over a decade. He set about trying to fix the quarterback position. Maybe not in keeping with Bears tradition like McKie would like, but perhaps that's a good thing.