When the Bears boldly moved up to take quarterback Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick of the 2017 NFL draft, Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald reached for his cell phone and started texting.
A big fan of the Bears and Trubisky, Fitzgerald wanted to share his excitement with two Wildcats assistant coaches who could relate to how close the new quarterback of Chicago's NFL team came to playing for Chicago's Big Ten team. Immediately, Fitzgerald texted Northwestern offensive line coach Adam Cushing and offensive coordinator Mick McCall about the one who got away.
"We loved Mitch," Fitzgerald recalled this week. "He was a great student, a terrific young man, a great fit for us. But it's a crazy deal, recruiting."
Trubisky was the third name on a list of quarterbacks Northwestern recruited in the spring of 2012, months before his senior year at Mentor (Ohio) High School. The Wildcats fell in love with Trubisky's potential after Cushing traveled to Ohio to watch the quarterback throw at outdoor workouts that attracted college recruiters like a magnet to steel.
"I remember Northwestern coming to my high school and getting involved but then they took another quarterback so I never even got the chance to take a visit or commit there," Trubisky recalled Tuesday at Halas Hall. "I really didn't know where I wanted to go at the time and was going through the recruiting process, open to all my options. They came off the board because they took a quarterback and stopped recruiting me."
That quarterback was Matt Alviti, a four-star prospect considered one of the top dual-threats in the country entering his senior year at Illinois' Maine South. Injuries and the emergence of Northwestern starter Clayton Thorson have prevented Alviti from fulfilling those high expectations in college — he has completed 4 of 8 passes for 14 yards in 10 career games. But, at the time, landing Alviti was considered a recruiting coup for Fitzgerald.
Malik Zaire, the Dayton product who just announced his graduate transfer from Notre Dame to Florida, was the only other high school quarterback Northwestern had offered a scholarship. If both Alviti and Zaire told Northwestern no, Fitzgerald planned to offer Trubisky. Zaire committed to Notre Dame on March 25, 2012, according to archives, and Alviti decided on Northwestern three weeks later.
"We were only going to take one quarterback," Fitzgerald said. "When Adam (Cushing) called Mitch to tell him we couldn't offer him, his character didn't change. It's just the way he is."
By then, Trubisky's recruiting had intensified as word spread about his accurate right arm. Home-state powerhouse Ohio State joined the mix, but Trubisky dropped out after future Silver Football Award winner J.T. Barrett committed that April. Other finalists included Alabama, Michigan State and Tennessee.
"But all the schools I was looking at started getting quarterbacks and no Big Ten schools really wanted me," Trubisky said. "So North Carolina was the best fit with that offense and the opportunity to play early. Obviously, I didn't play early, but the opportunity was there."
Here lies another opportunity for Trubisky, living in a football city starving for its next star, playing for a franchise that has fallen and can't get up. This might be free-agent quarterback Mike Glennon's year but it continues to feel like Trubisky's moment, seized when the Bears gave up so much on draft day to acquire more than a little hope. The number of cameras Trubisky noted around him after Tuesday's organized team activity practice offered a reminder of the 22-year-old's new reality, which he embraces.
With aplomb, Trubisky dismissed any potential issues about being the only unsigned Bears' draft pick — "I'm here to play football, I'm not worried about contracts," he said — or taking snaps behind center instead of from the shotgun. He called the viral video at the NFL rookies event throwing a football through a tire from 30 yards away "just messing around," and said he shut down his social-media access after that. His biggest surprise so far had less to do with the speed of the game as the length of the days.
"It wasn't a surprise as much as a realization of how much time you have to put in to be an NFL quarterback," Trubisky said. "It's all about blocking out distractions, and how good you want to be is about how much time you want to put in."
How good you want to be is about how much time you want to put in.
Trubisky sounded a little like Fitzgerald making one of his patented, earnest appeals for effort that could fit on the front of a T-shirt, a player echoing a coach he might have played for if the planets had aligned differently five years ago.
"I don't really know him well personally but from what I could tell he's a very respectable guy and passionate about the game, highly intelligent, intense guy who seems like a players' coach you would want to play for," Trubisky said of Fitzgerald.
The last conversation Fitzgerald had with Trubisky came in December 2014 when he visited a North Carolina practice after Northwestern failed to qualify for a bowl game. Fitzgerald looks forward to the next one.
"The Wildcats always have been Bears fans and this makes it even easier watching a guy we've always thought so much of," Fitzgerald said.
And if Fitzgerald still feels a tinge of regret seeing him every now and then?
"There are probably a lot of schools that look at it like that now," Trubisky said with a chuckle.
But none share a lakefront with the NFL stadium Trubisky now calls home.
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