Wannstedt blasts first-rounder Smith over camp holdout
Nagy won’t dwell on Mitch’s mistakes, wants them fixed
BOURBONNAIS — Quarterback Mitch Trubisky walked to the line of scrimmage Friday. He didn’t like what he saw. Fearing a sack, he made a protection check. To match the audible, he changed some of his receivers’ routes.
Coach Matt Nagy couldn’t have been happier.
“We’re building this puzzle right now, and each day we’re trying to take one piece of the puzzle and put it up there,” Nagy said. “And then before you know it, at the end of this thing, you have that puzzle put together.”
For every subtle victory, though, there can be a glaring mistake. Trubisky has been inconsistent through the Bears’ first seven training-camp practices at Olivet Nazarene University. After throwing two interceptions to Prince Amukamara on Thursday, he threw another to Kyle Fuller on Friday. Are they reason to worry? Nagy, who admitted that Trubisky “has had some bad plays,” is trying not to harp on his mistakes.
“That’s what I’m trying to do as a coach, is let him know, ‘Hey, we’re in this together,’ ” Nagy said. “‘You understand the bad you did, you understand the good you did, and then it’s our job ultimately in the end at game time to make it all good.’”
This early, Nagy has tried to avoid stressing the negative. But Trubisky can’t help but grow frustrated by an interception.
“He’s just so competitive,” running back Jordan Howard said. “He’s going to get upset about any mistake he makes. He wants to come out the next play and make them pay for what they did.”
Just because Nagy doesn’t harp on every error in real time — “He lets me go out and play and be myself and not worry about mistakes,” Trubisky said — doesn’t mean they go unnoticed. The Bears correct them in the film room while watching an earlier practice.
“There is a big emphasis on not making the same mistake twice,” Trubisky said. “Just play freely and let your instincts take over. And then when we make mistakes, just go back and learn from it.
“It allows me to be myself and play freely.’’
Give Trubisky this: At least he’s learning how to deal with adversity.
“He’s adjusting to any negative-type plays,” Nagy said. “So if there’s an interception, if there’s a screw-up in the play call, if he calls the wrong play in the huddle, he regroups . . . . It’s him coming out here trying to be a great quarterback, but don’t force it and make bad mistakes. If you do make mistakes, correct them. Don’t make them again. And he’s doing really well with all that.”
Trubisky has to process a lot each day. The team holds nightly meetings that force-feed him the new scheme. Nagy calls each meeting a “tornado” and claims there’s a method to the installation process. Until then, Trubisky will continue to have his good days and bad days — his smart audibles and ugly picks.
“We do like to, as coach Nagy likes to say, test ourselves — see what throws we can make, test the defense and challenge them every day like they’re challenging us,” Trubisky said. “You just have to find that balance and move on to the next play when there is a mistake. So I’ve been doing that all day, and we continue to get better.”
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