People always talk about arm strength with quarterbacks in the NFL. Without a strong arm, nobody can have success. Ask any QB expert worth their salt though and they’ll laugh at that notion. The truth is far different. Good quarterbacks don’t need a strong arm. They just need to throw accurate passes. They have to fit the ball into tight windows. It sounds easy but there’s a reason only a handful can do it with any consistency. Mitch Trubisky is not one of them.
Anybody who watched the Chicago Bears quarterback in 2019 could see the problem. He wasn’t just a little bit off at times. Trubisky developed a rough reputation for missing wide open receivers on a regular basis. This in addition to the usual misfires into tight windows he had. It was baffling to watch at times and undoubtedly frustrating for head coach Matt Nagy.
So how bad was it exactly? Football Outsiders conducted a study to determine the most and least accurate QBs in the NFL. Trubisky ranked 4th in the least category
“Matt Nagy and the Bears coaches made things as easy as possible for Trubisky, giving him the easiest throws of his career; his expected completion percentage was 70.3%. Trubisky still could not deliver.
His worst numbers came in the most crucial situations: a minus-4.5% CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expectation) on third down, a minus-8.2% CPOE in the fourth quarter, a minus-6.2% CPOE on deep passes, all at or near the worst marks in the league.
In his career, Trubisky has been most accurate throwing to his tight ends, which might explain why the Bears added roughly one thousand of them in the offseason. It’s one last attempt to see Trubisky realize his potential.”
Mitch Trubisky has nobody to blame but himself
People can point the finger everywhere else if they want. It was Nagy’s play calling. It was poor pass protection or it was no running game. The reality is it’s the job of the quarterback to make an offense more than the sum of its parts. The Atlanta Falcons had the 30th-ranked rushing attack in the NFL last season. Yet they still finished 5th in total yards. Why? Matt Ryan took it upon himself to cover up the team’s deficiencies.
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Trubisky repeatedly showed last season that he is incapable of doing that. This is why the the Bears traded for Nick Foles. If he can’t, then they had to find somebody who could. Foles has his own question marks but he also has a Super Bowl ring and a long track record of success in this offensive system.
Can Trubisky fix this issue? Depends on who you ask. A lot of experts say accuracy is a natural thing for most good quarterbacks. It is not something one can “learn.” Others feel with the right mechanics and fundamentals, it’s certainly possible. This training camp should test that theory one way or the other.
