■ Bears ‘next step’ quickly turned into a big stumble.
Mitch Trubisky’s checklist of 2019 goals left too many important boxes unchecked.
Sixteen weeks ago, on a gorgeous Thursday morning, the buzz in Chicago was intensifying and spreading, a footballcrazed city juiced up with excitement for the fall.
The Bears were back, baby! Reigning division champions. Super Bowl contenders. Hosts of the NFL’s 100th-season kickoff party. The in-transition Packers were visiting. And so many signs were pointing to continuation of the fun and achievement that defined 2018.
Man, oh, man, a potentially electric five-month experience seemed to be taking shape.
The Bears had an elite defense, the reigning NFL coach of the year and a developing offense eager to take the next step. Quarterback Mitch Trubisky, meanwhile, had the keys to the party bus and the organization’s trust that he could skillfully steer the Bears through the regular season, into the playoffs and perhaps, in the grandest of scenarios, all the way to South Florida for Super Bowl LIV.
Over the spring and summer, the Bears’ most important voices — including coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace — promised everyone that Trubisky had advanced past the introductory curriculum of playing quarterback in the NFL and was ready for accelerated courses.
The Bears emphasized the need for Trubisky to make steady, incremental improvements. But they believed he would show command of the offense and lift the play of everyone around him.
Two days before the season, on a roof deck at Halas Hall, Pace expressed his belief in Trubisky.
“We’re very proud of where he’s at right now and the trajectory that he’s on,” Pace said. “It’s his confidence, his knowledge in the offense, his ability to operate fast, see the field and process things. It’s the command he has with the entire offense and with his teammates. You can just feel that.”
And as that Thursday in September arrived, an optimistic curiosity lingered about what Trubisky’s 2019 developmental leap should look like.
During an appearance on WMVP-AM 1000 about eight hours before the season kicked off, I was asked how I would define Trubisky “taking the next step.” This was my answer:
“No. 1, it’s making the dips in the roller coaster less pronounced. There are going to be dips. We can’t avoid that. But it’s making sure that they’re not massive dips where the whole city is pulling its hair out not knowing which Mitch Trubisky you’re going to get on a week-in, week-out basis.
“No. 2, it’s the ability to consistently hit big plays. Matt (Nagy) has been pounding this touchdown-to-checkdown mentality forever. This is 202 Matt Nagy offense where you need to be able to see the things that are dialed up for you and make the throws to make them happen.
“And No. 3, it’s winning games. You can’t rely on Eddie Jackson in the fourth quarter of a game at Detroit to get you a pick-six to rescue you. Now, that was a Chase Daniels start (on Thanksgiving 2018). But you know what I’m saying. The defense bailed the offense out on more than one occasion last year. And there’s going to come a point where games are close in the fourth quarter and it’s up to Mitch to either lead them to a go-ahead score or to seal a game where they’re leading by four and you go down and you put that touchdown on and make it 11 and the game’s over. So it’s being that closer as well as those other two things that I talked about.”
The bar was set.
Now here we are, heading into the season finale against the Vikings on Sunday in Minnneapolis, and the progress report can be crafted.
No. 1: Those dips in the roller coaster? Try to keep the corn dogs and funnel cakes down if you can. Because this season has been wildly disorienting. In Great America terms, Trubisky’s dips have been nothing like the Whizzer. This has been like riding Raging Bull with a broken safety harness, then immediately doing dizzy bats and taking three consecutive spins on Goliath.
Trubisky’s first performance was an alarmingly erratic night in a spirit-crushing 10-3 loss to the Packers. The Bears scored only three points on 12 possessions, were booed periodically and lost when Trubisky stared down Allen Robinson and threw an interception in the end zone. Trubisky posted a 62.1 passer rating, and Chicago felt its stomach drop.
Trubisky’s final 2019 showing at Soldier Field came Sunday night. The Bears again went without a touchdown. Trubisky didn’t get past 100 passing yards until the 11th play of the fourth quarter. Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs thoroughly outclassed the Bears in a 26-3 win. Trubisky labeled the night as “embarrassing.” Ugh.
Has Trubisky enjoyed some encouraging highs in between? Certainly. For a 13-minute span of the second quarter in Week 3, he carved up the Redskins defense with ease on his way to a 20-for-23, 173-yard, three-touchdown first half.
He led a game-winning touchdown drive on Thanksgiving in Detroit with a series of confident, clutch throws.
He addled the Cowboys with both his arm and his legs in Week 14, accounting for 307 total yards and four touchdowns in a heartening win.
But there was also an abysmal performance in a blowout loss to the Drew Breesless Saints in mid-October. There was repeated sloppiness, a surplus of missed opportunities and two turnovers the next week against the Chargers. There was a 9-yard first half in Philadelphia and a stunningly slow start against the floundering Giants.
There have been four first halves in which the Bears didn’t score and 10 in which the offense didn’t score a touchdown. (For the math majors in the group, that’s two-thirds of the time!)
Bottom line: This roller coaster hasn’t been safe or all that fun and isn’t recommended for those with weak stomachs, vertigo or heart problems.
No. 2: What about that touchdown-to-checkdown growth that was supposed to surface in Trubisky’s third season? What about his ability to consistently create big plays in the passing game? What about the ability to make game-changing throws frequently?
Trubisky’s latest inexcusable misfire came in the second quarter Sunday, a potential 46-yard touchdown to Allen Robinson that became an incompletion when Trubisky — on a play designed to move the pocket, which gave him all night and then some to operate — threw 2 yards too far to an open target. Costly misfire. Trubisky acknowledged as much. Again.
A day later, Nagy didn’t need a deep-dive analysis of Trubisky’s mechanics or the intricacies of the play. His assessment was direct: “It’s one where we would all just say he missed.”
And the teaching point for Trubisky? “The lesson,” Nagy said, “is that you want to hit ‘em. I know it’s simple. I’m just saying when you get opportunities in a game, those are ones there where we all want to do our job.”
Too many times, Trubisky just hasn’t hit the big play. At times, he hasn’t seen it. And all too frequently, he has seen it and missed the throw.
According to Next Gen Stats, Trubisky has completed only 42.7% of passes thrown at least 10 yards past the line of scrimmage. He has only 15 completions of at least 30 yards, which ranks 18th in the league. (Jameis Winston has an NFL-best 29.) Trubisky has only three touchdown passes of 20 yards or longer, which ranks 30th. (Mahomes leads the league with 14.)
With all of that taken into account, it’s hard to identify progress in the touchdown-to-checkdown department.
No. 3: Last, how should we view Trubisky as a closer, as the primary reason the Bears find ways to finish off victories? He succeeded against the Cowboys this month. And his late fourth-quarter touchdown drive to beat the Lions on Thanksgiving deserves a nod of recognition, with Trubisky delivering third-down completions of 35 and 32 yards on that march and showing command and moxie in a do-ordie situation.
And if you’re really feeling generous, Trubisky’s lone completion on a gamewinning drive in Denver — a 25-yard strike to Robinson to set up a 53-yard field goal with 1 second left — means something. But don’t forget that came in a game in which Trubisky didn’t top 100 passing yards until that final completion.
So what about the other games in which Trubisky had a golden opportunity to be a closer but couldn’t deliver?
Cross off the losses to the Saints, Eagles, Chiefs and the second game against the Packers. The offense’s early ineptitude put the Bears in chase mode. In those four games, the offense scored a total of six first-half points and the Bears led for an aggregate 5 minutes, 2 seconds after the first quarter.
The opener against the Packers counts as a missed opportunity. The Bears had the ball six times in the second half with a chance to take the lead or tie the game and never could capitalize, with Trubisky’s end-zone interception the biggest blunder.
The Week 11 road game against the Rams also qualifies as a headache. Trubisky’s final four possessions came with the Bears trailing 10-7. The results: 30 total yards, one first down and four punts.
And while, yes, it’s true the Bears had a makeable 41-yard field-goal attempt on the final play to beat the Chargers in Week 8 — a kick set up by a nifty 11-yard Trubisky scramble — it’s fair to acknowledge they never should have trailed a struggling and injury-riddled team in the final moments at home.
Three stalled drives inside the red zone in the first half were frustrating. But they were nowhere near as troublesome as Trubisky’s missed 58-yard touchdown strike to Taylor Gabriel with 9:39 to play and the Bears ahead 16-10. That was a chance to deliver the dagger. On the next snap, Trubisky fumbled and gave the Chargers a short field for their go-ahead 26-yard touchdown march. It was his second turnover in the fourth quarter after an interception on a forced pass to Trey Burton a series earlier.
And don’t forget, Nagy had so little faith in Trubisky in the final stages of that game, he refused to use all the time the Bears had to set up an easier field-goal attempt for Eddy Pineiro. With 43 seconds left and first down at the Chargers 21-yard line, the Bears opted to kneel. And when Nagy was asked after the loss whether he had considered throwing a pass to advance the ball before the game-ending kick, he acted as if he had been asked whether he considered drinking a Big Gulp of Palmolive. So, yeah. It’s hard to give Trubisky high marks for that day.
In summary, this hasn’t been Quarterbacking 202. This hasn’t been the “next step” the Bears were advertising and fans were counting on. This hasn’t been a year that has pushed the organization any closer to winning a Super Bowl, even though the window of opportunity seemed wide open just four months ago.