Backup QBs have seen it all
These very things were happening in New York this week, with Jets rookie Sam Darnold able to empathize easily with Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky. The two passers will return to the stage Sunday at Soldier Field — against one another and in similar spots.
Both need to overcome sloppy performances in disappointing defeats. Both are trying to do so with fan bases eager for them to become surefire All-Pros by Thanksgiving and fretting at each blast of turbulence.
Darnold woke up Monday with the New York tabloids trumpeting his struggles. Six weeks after he had been hailed for igniting a 48-17 blowout of the Lions in the season opener, Darnold was pictured on the back of the New York Post with his chin cemented to his chest. The headline: “The Big Chill: Darnold’s frigid effort cools off surging Jets.”
That was the back-page summary of a loss in which the rookie completed only 40.5 percent of his passes while being intercepted three times.
On talk radio Monday, WFAN host Boomer Esiason, an NFL quarterback for 14 years himself, folded it all into the proper perspective.
“This is part of the process of being an NFL quarterback,” Esiason said. “You go to work and you feel like crap today. You probably got no sleep last night. You feel like crap. You got your ass beat. You got the realization that you have not conquered anything just yet. And you just have to fight your way through it.
“This is truly, truly what determines whether or not you can become an NFL quarterback. It’s picking yourself up off the mat and going out there and playing again next week.”
Easy enough. But how exactly?
Let it go
Lucky for Darnold and Trubisky, both have helpful veteran backups at their sides. Josh McCown and Chase Daniel are trusted advisers who can help them get recalibrated.
In his 16th NFL season and now behind the scenes in his 10th NFL organization, McCown has acquired enough experience and wisdom to know where the booby traps often are hidden for young quarterbacks.
Games can be lost on Monday or Tuesday if a quarterback can’t quickly process Sunday’s performance in a productive manner. To borrow a yoga term, it’s all about coming back to center. “Letting go,” McCown said, “is vital.” McCown, once the trusted right-hand man for Jay Cutler with the Bears, learned long ago that day-after-game film sessions are most valuable when seen as an educational tool rather than a scolding or a celebration.
“If you win, you have to fight complacency and thinking that you have arrived,” he said. “And when you lose, you have to fight those tough feelings of ‘How are we going to get back?’ ”
In a similar vein, Daniel has reminded Trubisky that the feelings that come with each game’s result should be allowed to exist without suppression — from the final gun through Sunday night and right up until film review begins Monday morning.
“Let yourself feel the emotions, whether it’s a win or a loss,” Daniel said. “And if it’s a loss, do whatever you can to feel it. You want that. You want that in your system.”
If a quarterback can cross that bridge gracefully week after week, the chances of producing consistent success should increase. Still, it can be a difficult task, especially for an inherently self-critical player like Trubisky, whose impressive drive sometimes can morph into selfinduced pressure.
To that end, Bears coach Matt Nagy believes Trubisky’s improvements have been noticeable since August, when training camp errors often lingered.
“We would get stuck in that last play, and it would affect the next play and the next play,” Nagy said. “It’s baby steps for us right now. In training camp I talked about putting together little pieces of the puzzle to build this great puzzle. Well, now it’s getting filled.”
Daniel has seen the way Nagy’s demanding yet reassuring touch has helped Trubisky.
“Matt lets him know: ‘Just relax, man. You have this. There’s no looking over your shoulder. This is your offense. This is your team.’ I think him hearing that over and over again has helped.”
System overload
As Darnold returned to work this week, McCown found himself reassured but hardly surprised by the rookie’s forward focus. During Monday’s film session at Jets headquarters and later that night over dinner at Osteria Trevi in New Jersey, McCown could sense Darnold had decompressed properly from Sunday’s 20-point battering by the Vikings.
The two Jets quarterbacks were ready to start attacking Bears preparation. And within that, McCown knew he had to start feeding Darnold as much relevant intel as possible without providing too much. That’s easier said than done, particularly for longtime veterans working with quarterbacks in their first or second year.
“There is so much that these younger guys have to learn,” McCown said. “So you have to narrow their focus each week to improving something specific and not overloading them.
“So many of these guys come into the league very prepared. But a lot of times, as you’re digesting a big playbook, you have to identify the need-to-know things to do your job.”
Daniel co-signs that sentiment and acknowledges that some of Trubisky’s struggles in the first few games were likely a byproduct of his mind being too full.
For five seasons, Daniel worked alongside Drew Brees with the Saints. He spent three more with the Chiefs’ Alex Smith. So it was easy to forget the earliest stages of a quarterback’s climb.
Now, as he moves forward with Trubisky, Daniel stresses one word above everything else: simplicity.
Rather than push Trubisky into an all-you-can-eat buffet line of information on opposing defenses, Daniel has learned, for now, to be more of an hors d’oeuvre waiter.
Said Daniel: “Coverage-wise, it could be: ‘What are they doing on third-and-2 or -3? What are they doing on third-and-4 to -6? What are they doing on third-and-7 to -10? What are they doing on third-and-11-plus?’ Well, that’s a lot. So instead, now I’m giving him two to three points on all of third down.
“That’s something with Mitch that really has helped. He’s able to go to the line now with two things on his mind rather than five or six.”
Back to basics. Simplicity.
“When you’re with Drew and Alex, they don’t need simplicity,” Daniel said. “They need as much as you can give them. But with Mitch, as we were hashing things out the first two or three weeks, maybe I was giving him too much information to think about, and he wasn’t playing as fast. Now I’m not saying that’s all because of me. But I just think maybe us as a whole, we were just giving him too much to think about.”
Time management
For Trubisky, Daniel also has been helpful in establishing a productive weekly schedule. It’s a routine he picked up from Brees with a few personal twists.
In a nutshell, Daniel keeps the quarterbacks studying a day ahead of the rest of the team. The Bears do their on-field thirddown work in Thursday practices. So the quarterbacks spend a chunk of every Wednesday evening dialing in on thirddown cut-ups, then arrive before sunrise the next morning to continue their prep work.
Friday’s practices are red-zone heavy. Thus, Thursday evening involves detailed film study on red-zone plays and explanations on why certain concepts match up well with that week’s opponent.
“It’s something Mitch can take home and think about overnight before he comes in the next day,” Daniel said. “When we come in in the morning, those plays are already on his brain.”
Trubisky has emphasized that Daniel’s scheduling approach has pushed him forward. A few weeks back, he expressed that thanks directly.
Recalled Daniel: “He said, ‘I just feel so much more prepared this year to play.’ And it’s proven.”
Whatever it takes to keep the grind moving efficiently. After all, the weekly routine can grow tedious for NFL quarterbacks. Answering the same questions in meetings for the 106th time. Going through the same reads day after day. Zeroing in on the same fundamentals practice after practice.
At times, it can feel like a distance swimmer doing laps — back and forth, following the black line at the pool’s bottom.
Still, the joys of Sundays can’t be experienced unless the Monday-throughSaturday processes run smoothly.
“That,” McCown said, “is the challenge. It’s being able to go through the routine things that you do every day with purpose. It’s being able to take the mundane and embrace it and attack it with a level of detail. Over and over again. For 17 weeks.
“And if you do, you give yourself the best opportunity to succeed on Sunday. But if you gloss over something because it’s mundane or because you had success the previous Sunday, that’s when you’re opening up yourself to failure.”
Besides, the tedium is broken up naturally by the opponent-specific challenges folded within each week. For Trubisky and the Bears this week, they had to polish their pre-snap communication to solve a Jets defense orchestrated by coach Todd Bowles that blitzes frequently with a wide variety of pressures.
“It’s a big puzzle this week,” Daniel said. “They’re aggressive. And aggressive defensive coordinators are the hardest to play because you just don’t know what they’re going to do.”
McCown: 16 seasons, 8 teams, 73 starts and 20 different quarterbacks who started ahead of him
Noise alert
McCown’s entry into the NFL came in 2002 as a backup to Jake Plummer with the Cardinals. So while he readily acknowledges that being a starting quarterback always has been an intense existence, he also has enough perspective to understand the pressure cooker is turned up higher than it ever has been. The demands for instant gratification have increased. And consequently the negativity that can bombard young quarterbacks has been amplified.
“When I first came in the league, we had flip phones and they delivered newspapers door to door,” McCown said. “You could choose to not get the newspaper. You could kind of insulate yourself as a player to where you didn’t really have to know what was going on outside.”
Nowadays, a quarterback’s biggest fans and loudest detractors are right there in his pocket, just a tempted thumb click away. In even a single moment of curiosity, Trubisky and Darnold would be able to find endless analysis of their play — some of it informed, much of it not.
Said Daniel: “If you get too enamored with that stuff, that’s when you start seeing ghosts and not trusting who you are and what you are.”
Trubisky made a vow before training camp to remove himself from social media altogether. “Zero-Dark-10” he called it. Daniel, an admitted social media fiend, supports his young teammate’s approach with a full awareness of Trubisky’s wiring.
“Mitch is such a people-pleaser,” he said. “He wants to be loved. And that’s one of his greatest qualities. He wants his teammates to love him and respect him. But fans as well. … Overall, in life, you just want to be liked. So when people say stuff that’s hateful to you over the Internet, it gets to you, whether you like it or not.”
As unproven as they are, Trubisky and Darnold have unbridled support from within their organizations. Daniel has seen Trubisky’s natural ability to bring a team together, how his easygoing yet purposeful manner instills confidence in the offense.
McCown commends Darnold’s ability to throw on the run, his accuracy from the pocket and his ability to acclimate quickly to the program. But he also insists the rookie’s competitiveness, resilience and deep love of the game matter most.
“Those character traits,” McCown said, “are what bring out the physical traits. Because Sam loves the game and he puts in the time. And he’s resilient. You have to start there or the physical traits don’t matter. That’s big. And it’s what will give him a chance to be successful in the future.”
On Sunday at Soldier Field, both quarterbacks will attempt to prove they have taken the right steps to bounce back from last week’s struggles. It will be another highly scrutinized test that will produce widespread reaction.
Win or lose, both quarterbacks will reset and start the cycle all over again.