Deshaun Watson shades Bears after Doug Gottlieb’s NFL ‘race’ claim

It already looks bad enough that the Bears drafted Mitchell Trubisky with the No. 2 pick in 2017, ahead of other quarterbacks like Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson.

But if the Bears didn’t even talk to Watson before the draft?

That’s how Watson claimed it went down, which would only twist the dagger for Bears fans.

“The bears NEVER ONCE talked to me.. ” the 24-year-old Watson tweeted Friday in response to a tweet from Fox Sports radio host Doug Gottlieb.

The topic was revisited recently after the Bears declined the fifth-year option on Trubisky, who has struggled to live up to expectations. Author John Feinstein relayed an opinion from former Redskins quarterback and Super Bowl XXII MVP Doug Williams.

“I asked Doug Williams where Mahomes and Watson would have gone if they’d been white: ‘Ahead of Trubisky,’ he said. ‘Ahead of No. 2’ I said. ‘Absolutely,’ he answered,’” Feinstein tweeted.

Friday, Gottlieb tried to discredit that theory, saying the Bears evaluated all of the quarterbacks before the draft but just got it wrong.

“This is beyond idiotic @JFeinsteinBooks,” Gottlieb tweeted. “The idea the league evaluates a QB on race in 2020 is just dumb, disconnected and bitterness from 40 year old transgressions – Trubisky isn’t as good as Watson/Mahomes, the Bears evaluated em all, and missed. That’s it.”

Except, of course, if the Bears never even talked to Watson.

Twitter seluths were quick to find that Watson did say in the lead up to the 2017 draft that the Bears were among the teams that he had talked to on the phone.

But Watson’s personal quarterback coach, Quincy Avery, said Watson’s latest account was accurate and him mentioning having talked to the Bears was just about “leverage.”

Three years after the fact, Watson, who went to the Texans at No. 12, and Mahomes, who went to the Chiefs at No. 10, are thriving while the Bears just traded for Nick Foles to compete with Trubisky for the starting job this fall.

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