Time to see Bears’ rookie QB
THE MOST delicate decision an NFL head coach can make is figuring out when to start a rookie quarterback.
No matter how talented or highly touted the player might be, knowing when he’s ready to face the fire is a question that cannot be answered until the player is given the keys to the car.
This brings us to the 1-3 Bears, who are desperate for a spark and some hope and have decided to take the shrink wrap off their firstround pick, rookie quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, when they play the Vikings on Monday night.
The Mike Glennon experiment — despite the $18.5 million guaranteed the Bears gave him — appears to be over after just four games, during which he turned the ball over eight times.
Enter Trubisky, whom the Bears aggressively traded up to No. 2 overall in the draft to select in the spring. Trubisky looked good in preseason, throwing for 364 yard, three touchdowns, no interceptions and posting a 106.2 passer rating. Now he plays for real, and he insisted this week that he’s ready for it.
Trubisky, who started j ust 13 games at the University of North Carolina, becomes the third quarterback selected in the 2017 draft to start this season, joining Deshaun Watson of the Texans and DeShone Kizer of the Browns.
Watson has excelled for the Texans, but Kizer has struggled for the Browns, leading the NFL with eight INTs.
It was Bears GM Ryan Pace’s plan for the team to patiently develop Trubisky before putting him in a game. The Bears’ poor start and fan unrest in Chicago has hastened that plan.
“It was just a decision I thought needed to be made,” Bears coach John Fox said this week. “We’ve had 10 giveaways in the first four weeks of the season, and you can’t win football games that way. Not that they were all one guy’s fault, but the combination of that, we’re going a different direction.” Is Trubisky ready? “You understand as a rookie at any position, there’s going to be some of those mistakes,” Fox said. “It won’t all be perfect. But I just like the dimension that Mitch brings, and we’ll see where that goes.”