Rozner: For Chicago Bears, it's always about selling the future

You can already envision next week's news conference.

There's no George McCaskey or Ted Phillips sitting before the fans and media, because GM Ryan Pace has a lifetime pass from the franchise elders.

So it's just Pace and Matt Nagy talking about how great 2019 was for everyone involved, how the team made tremendous progress in the fifth season of a rebuild — the equivalent of 12 or 13 years in big-league baseball.

It's the way it has to be as Pace, Nagy and Mitch Trubisky are linked forever, not one can blame another without all being in trouble, not one can be fired without all being shown the door.

So they join hands and sing you a song, a jingle you have heard so many times that you could leap on stage with them for a Guinness-record karaoke.

“Auld Lang Syne” should be so understood and practiced.

You can't be offended, not if you've been around these parts the last 30 years, not if you stick around to hear it again.

Pace will be “fired up” for 2020 and Nagy will be “excited” about the possibilities, revealing that he knew all along it would take Trubisky years and years to figure it out at the NFL level, even though Nagy was hired to make it happen immediately.

And if you look closely, Nagy will say, you can see it happening.

They will point to the few good quarters or halves Trubisky has played in the last three years as proof that it's all coming together.

Dismissed will be the memory of how this was supposed to be a Super Bowl season.

In that regard, Sunday night's game at Soldier Field against Kansas City was irrelevant, the Bears' loss to the Chiefs carrying little meaning since the home team was already eliminated from the playoff race and the decision on Trubisky made before the season had begun.

That doesn't mean it wasn't interesting.

Pat Mahomes was brilliant, Trubisky clueless, Nagy completely lost, and Andy Reid professional.

The walking — sometimes running — and breathing contradictions were everywhere, though otherwise it had all the hallmarks of the 2019 Bears, replete with terrible throws, awful play calls, ridiculous penalties and plenty of booing by a home crowd that was bored and generally very, very quiet when the Bears' offense was sitting.

Bears fans are not as dumb as management believes. They know what an NFL quarterback looks like, and they were keenly aware that there was one in Chicago on Sunday night.

The result, a 26-3 Kansas City victory, probably wasn't as entertaining as the cameras' search for Pace in a shadowy suite, Bears fans reminded of the 2017 draft each time Mahomes made an amazing play.

While Trubisky said last week that he was aware of the comparisons with Mahomes, who went at No. 10 and eight spots behind Trubisky, it says a lot about how the Bears try to shield Trubisky that the head coach told him “not to worry” about it.

“If you start worrying about the individual stuff,” Nagy said, “I think that it doesn't normally go too well.”

That's how fragile the Bears think Trubisky is at this stage of his career, a three-year veteran who needs to be coddled and swaddled in an orange blanket.

For the love of George Halas and all that's holy, can you believe this is where the franchise rests, in the hands of those who are so afraid that the QB's feelings might be injured?

Think Tom Brady or Lamar Jackson will shrink from comparisons if they run up against each other again, even at this disparate moment in their careers, possessing such impossibly different styles?

Think their coaches will be afraid? Think their teammates will be careful about how they frame it? Think they know this is the NFL?

In no way is this Trubisky's fault. He didn't pick himself second or pass on Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, but the Bears do him no favors by protecting him or pretending he's something that's he not.

And they are very good at that.

So it's up to Trubisky to keep hammering away at Nagy, keep asking to get outside the pocket where he might have a fighting chance.

It's not the only answer, but it can't hurt as the Bears search for ways in 2020 to get Trubisky back on his Hall of Fame path.

In the meantime, the Bears (7-8) will play one more game in hopes of reaching the all-important .500 mark, and then sell you hard on the idea that all is well, the window is wide open and the sun is shining.

The future's so bright you want to pull the shades.