Watson sensed early on the Bears’ interest in him was minimal and shrugged past it. People in his camp, however, were perplexed. Quincy Avery, one of Watson’s private quarterback coaches and a close confidant, scratched his head.
“It just seemed like a big mistake on their part,” Avery said.
If the Bears were truly on the hunt for a franchise-changing quarterback, Avery wondered, why wouldn’t they do the full gamut of homework on a two-time recipient of the Davey O’Brien Award, given to the top quarterback in college football? Why hadn’t the Bears held a private workout with Watson or taken him to dinner as they had with Trubisky and Patrick Mahomes?
Instead, they met with Watson during the assembly-line interview process at the combine and for a bit after his pro-day workout. That was it.
“Honestly,” Avery said, “I thought that either they had some kind of wild process where they were going to try to sneak under the radar and grab Deshaun because they had heard so many positive things about him. Or it was an organization with a bunch of dysfunction that wasn’t prepared to be successful or didn’t have the pieces in place to truly take the next steps.”
