Mitch Trubisky caught a ton of heat for his regression following the end of 2018. Suddenly a guy who was a Pro Bowl alternate and seemed poised to take the next step seemed to fall apart in 2019. People were left wondering what had happened. Where was the guy who’d almost knocked off the defending champs in the playoffs? Nobody could figure it out.
As time went on and the inconsistencies continued, people became convinced Trubisky was just bad. He needed to go. That is why when the Bears benched him against Atlanta in favor of Nick Foles, there was a celebration. Finally, the team had a legitimate quarterback under center. Somebody who’d won a Super Bowl and played in a system similar to Matt Nagy’s.
Those same people were in for a rude shock.
The offense didn’t get better with Foles. It actually got worse. He put the ball in harm’s way even more often than Trubisky and didn’t have the mobility to compensate for a struggling offensive line. As a result, the offense ground to a halt. Going into the bye week, the Bears had lost five-straight and were lifeless. So Nagy made the tough decision to go back to Trubisky.
Not only that but it came with another change. The head coach was no longer calling plays. Offensive coordinator Bill Lazor took over those duties. Since the end of the bye, the Bears are now averaging 31 points per game and have topped 400 yards in each of the past three weeks. Trubisky has eight touchdowns and just three interceptions in that span. When asked if this is the most comfortable he’s ever felt in a Bears uniform? He admitted as much.
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“Yeah, I do. I feel very comfortable right now. I think we keep getting better each week as an offense, which is important. We’re gaining confidence as a unit. Right now we’re just executing at a high rate which obviously helps consistency across the board. We’ve been efficient. I feel very comfortable and I’m very confident with where we’re at…mindset with the guys and how we’re handling each week.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj0lEb_48Ak&ab_channel=ChicagoBears
Mitch Trubisky is back to playing like it’s 2018
If people remember, the Bears had a clear identity that year. They would run the ball with Jordan Howard and let Trubisky take advantage with play action and bootlegs. For whatever reason, they stopped doing that in 2019. It really felt like Nagy was trying to run more of the traditional system he’d brought with him from Kansas City. One built around a pass-first approach with the QB reading the field and making the right throws based on coverage.
It didn’t work. Yet rather than go back to what did the year before, Nagy persisted. He kept trying to get the young quarterback to play like Alex Smith or Patrick Mahomes. He failed to understand that Trubisky is a different kind of player. A quarterback who is not capable or not ready to run that type of offense. Rather than adjust to the strengths of his players, the head coach took a different approach.
He traded for somebody who seemingly could in Foles.
That plan blew up in his face. Soon people began to wonder if Nagy was the problem. Had he just used Mitch Trubisky as a scapegoat to conceal his own deficiencies as an offensive play-caller? The sudden resurgence of the Bears offense in recent weeks seems to offer overwhelming evidence towards that assumption. Now the team is forced to ask a difficult question.
Should they consider trying to retain Trubisky in 2021 in an effort to see if this recent run of success is legit? He clearly has a nice connection with Lazor who is catering to his strengths. Maybe that course of action is best for the Bears at least in the short-term.