The Chicago Bears’ decades of struggles to find a franchise quarterback have been well documented. But as it turns out, it isn’t for lack of trying.
While calling the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Philadelphia Eagles game on Sunday, Tom Brady, the most accomplished quarterback of all time, revealed that the Bears pursued him when he became a free agent in 2020. According to Brady, he seriously considered heading to Chicago after leaving the New England Patriots but ended up choosing the Bucs.
“There was a lot of reasons to choose Tampa, and I made about 18 criteria why, and there was things all the way from salary, obviously, to the weather to the facilities to how great the players were,” Brady said. “Ultimately, Chicago was a team, and I’ve never told that story before, they were very stealth in their recruitment. I was seriously considering them.”
Brady let the Bucs to a Super Bowl win, his seventh, in his first season with the franchise. He followed that up with two more seasons of exceptional quarterback play before deciding to retire.
The Chicago Bears, on the other hand, had Mitchell Trubisky and Nick Foles under center for the 2020 season and finished the regular season with an 8-8 record before being eliminated in the Wild Card game in the playoffs. They later drafted Ohio State’s Justin Fields in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft to be their next franchise quarterback before moving on from him after three seasons.
The Bears now hope that they finally got the position right with former Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams, whom they selected first overall in 2024.
