The Chicago Bears predictably got a ton of flak from the national media when they decided to keep Mitch Trubisky as their starting quarterback. They argued what the point of it was. They traded a 4th round pick and guaranteed a lot of money to get Nick Foles. Why even do that if their plan was to stick with Trubisky all along.
The answer is that wasn’t the plan. Matt Nagy made it clear the Bears were going to conduct a fair competition from the start. From every observation made at training camp and comments from the players themselves? That is exactly what happened. In the end, Trubisky seemed to improve enough to convince the head coach he was ready for another chance.
Needless to say, most already assume it will be a failure. Why? Trubisky isn’t any good. Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy doesn’t subscribe to that belief. He believes he knows what the problem was with the quarterback last year and explained it on the Under Center Podcast.
“He played so loose and free two years ago…I think the game lost some fun. That’s something I learned from Chuck Noll when I was working for the Steelers. Don’t take the fun out of it. Yes we’ve got to win and yes we’ve got to produce and yes we’ve got to be on point. But it’s still football. It’s still a game. So get back to having fun.
I think Mitch Trubisky…is he going to be Patrick Mahomes? He may never be that. But Mitch Trubisky is good enough to play winning football and get you to a Super Bowl.”
Mitch Trubisky suffered from burden of expectations
The way Dungy sees it, the exceedingly high expectations of 2019 were a primary component in why Trubisky struggled. He got so caught up in this idea he needed to be perfect that the game stopped being fun for him. This showed up almost immediately in the opening day loss to the Packers where the offense scored just three points. It seemed like things snowballed from there.
Subscribe to the BFR Youtube channel and ride shotgun with Dave and Ficky as they break down Bears football like nobody else.
Nothing about Trubisky on the field signaled he was having fun. A stark contrast to the year before. The Bears sensed it too. This is likely a big reason they made the decisions they did this offseason from trading for Foles to declining his 5th year option. They wanted to see how the former #2 pick would respond. He gave them the answer they were looking for.
Even Trubisky admitted he regained his confidence these past few months. A clear indication that Dungy was correct. He’d lost it last season. If this is true and he returns to that form he flashed in 2018? Then the Bears could be in good shape.