The Chicago Bears did something risky the other day. They gave up a bunch of picks to trade up from third place to second in the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft, dealing with San Francisco, in order to then draft quarterback Mitch Trubisky out of UNC.

Trubisky only spent one season as a starter with North Carolina, backing up Marquise Williams (currently a free agent) in 2014 and 2015 after redshirting in his first season. To be fair to him, the dude did well winning eight of his 13 games and competing at a high percentage while also showing a little athleticism when needed too. That sounds like a good quarterback right there, though time will tell.

Yet when Trubisky was drafted, the telly analysts were out there trying to supress their confusion. When Trubisky faced the media for the first time as an NFL player, the questions were about how surprised he was (“it was a huge surprise!”). And when he showed up at a Chicago Bulls playoff game the next day, his first taster of the sporting legacy of his new hometown, the 22 year old was booed as his face popped up on the big screen.

The idea was that while Trubisky was definitely one of the top ranked QBs in this draft pool, it also wasn’t the strongest class of quarterbacks and Chicago probably didn’t need to trade up to get him. There was a good chance he’d still be available at three but in order to take care of the risk the Bears gave up three other picks to move up one spot.

While the Niners could use the talent under centre (though Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley can win a few games for them), what they really needed was depth of talent on defence and being able to pick three extra players makes enormous sense for them. One middle-pick next season and a couple here – they took DE Solomon Thomas at third and shifted around those two other picks in trades with New Orleans and Seattle. The Niners flipped their second rounder and the Bears’ fourth to move into the late first round and get linebacker Reuben Foster, for example, and there were a few other similar moves.

All up they came away with 10 new players as well as a couple extra future picks. They didn’t get the crucial piece that’ll turn this team from a 2-14 side in 2016 back into the Super Bowl contender they were before they lost half their damn defence (and a good chunk of their offence) through a horrible couple years of free agency, suspensions, retirements and general underperformance. However they’re closer to getting there now under new GM/Head Coach duo of John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan than they were a week ago.

And that’s the difference between those two approaches. The Bears went hard at the player they believe can take them over the top while the 49ers played things safe and built up their squad around that open slate at quarterback (although Hoyer is a very talented dude when fit – in fact he thoroughly outplayed Jay Cutler while with the Bears last season). The Houston Texans may have gotten to the playoffs last time despite getting nothing but disaster from their QBs but that’s pretty much as far as you can go if you don’t have a genuine dude taking those snaps. The Baltimore Ravens needed an all-time impressive defence (Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs AND Ed Reed!) to get Joe Flacco a ring and even then he playing against Colin Kaepernick. You have to have a quarterback… but the only thing worse than having no quarterback is having a bad one.

The Bears have a quarterback, they gave Mike Glennon $45m over three years only last month. To then trade up and draft a rookie QB sends a bit of a message to Glennon, they were willing to give up other assets to select a bloke who plays in the same position that you’d already been promised, bro. Take that personally. Although let’s just say that there are doubts over Glennon as a long term starter. Most likely he begins the season and Trubisky develops beneath him with an eye on taking over in a year or two (or three). Which is only bound to piss Chicago fans off more, who’ll wanna see immediate reward for what they already feel was a reckless draft day move.

But that’s the stupid thing here. We wanna see immediate reactions, we wanna see judgements and grades for every pick as soon as they’re made. Yet we’re talking about NFL prospects here. How are you gonna grade a dude’s worth in the NFL when he hasn’t even played an NFL game yet? The Bears might end up looking dumb here and the Niners might end up looking equally silly… or both could come out brilliantly. Perhaps both will be true over and over again in cycles, showing how pointless all this endless evaluation is. Eventually we will be able to put all of these picks in better context but when you pick a bloke to play football, that’s what you gotta judge them on.

The Bears weren’t the only team to trade up for a quarterback either. Curiously the Kansas City Chiefs moved up to tenth to take Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes which was strange to say the least. Mahomes is known as something of a gunslinging type while the Chiefs are run by the stereotypical game-managing QB in Alex Smith. How that balance works will he fascinating though Mahomes, because of Smith’s place, will probably be a long-term project too. Two spots later the Houston Texans got busy moving up for Deshaun Watson outta Clemson. Watson’s a national title winner and a guy with plenty of college experience but there’s also a reason he slipped out of the top ten – although the Texans had no choice but to get a quarterback that could start straight away what with Tom Savage and Brandon Weeden on their roster. They might have panicked in trading up from 25 to 12 but they’d have been slammed if they came away with nobody. Savage still has the advantage for the top spot on the depth chart however Watson can overtake him with a strong rookie preseason.

Which is something that happened with the best quarterback of the 2016 draft. Dak Prescott wasn’t meant to start in Dallas but Kellen Moore, the expected backup, got injured and when Tony Romo joined him in the physio room… well the rest was history. Funny thing is, Prescott was a compensatory fourth round pick for the Cowboys. Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Paxton Lynch, Christian Hackenberg, Jacoby Brissett, Cody Kessler and Connor Cook all went before him.

Again, the lesson here is that you never know how each pick is gonna turn out down the line. The casual stowaway becomes a pro-bowler, the sure-fire starter gets injured, the steal of a second-rounder never meets his potential. All that sorta stuff. Not to get on the backs of Chicago fans here because God knows they’ve been through a lot in the whole Jay Cutler Era thing but booing a selection before they’ve even played is crazy. The Philly fans booed the Donovan McNabb pick once… he damn sure won them over. Using the Cowboys as another example, they were slammed by the experts for reaching when they took offensive lineman Travis Frederick in the first round in 2013. Frederick became a first year starter at centre and has blocked for two rushing leaders in four years among arguably the best offensive line in the league.

The NFL Draft is fun as hell. Teams show their hands on how they wanna look, how they wanna play, where their priorities lie. It all begins to take shape at the draft. But maybe don’t freak out until you’ve actually seen what you’ve got in the arena it’s supposed to be showcased in.

Maybe then the smartest team of the lot was the Cleveland Browns, who resisted the urge to do anything reckless early on and came out with three first round picks before trading up slightly in the second to take QB DeShone Kizer of Notre Dame. Nothing dramatic but the worst franchise in the NFL knows it ain’t getting to the top in a hurry, so there’s no reason to waste assets on quick gambles. Kizer probably won’t even start, Brock Osweiler’s there on big cash. The Browns have made their fair share of ridiculous moves in the past, which we can say are ridiculous having seen what’s become of Johnny Manziel, Brandon Weeden, Brady Quinn and Tim Couch – all former Cleveland first round QB selections. The only thing worse than no quarterback is a bad quarterback, remember. And a bad quarterback, like the famous quote on obscenity, is something hard to define but you’ll know it when you see it. Try give these buggers the benefit of the doubt until you do see it.

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