If you build it, will he stink?
If we’re going to construct a Mitch-O-Meter to gauge the contributions of potential franchise quarterback Mitch Trubisky — and we should build one because all I could find on Etsy were “Mitch Please” T-shirts and a Khalil Mack coffee mug — then I imagine it would be shaped like the Lombardi Trophy with three stacked boxes to denote the choices to rate his play after each week’s game. Oh, and a sound effect.
Here’s the way it would go after the Bears’ 16-14 win last week against the dog-breath Cardinals:
The Bears won because of him. The Bears won with him.
The Bears won despite him. (Ding! Ding! Ding!)
The fear, of course, is that we can’t get this thing built before the end of Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers any more than Trubisky can change his rating.
Bears coach Matt Nagy said he might cut down the choice of plays Trubisky must learn. Nagy also might want to stop using John Shoop’s playbook.
In Nagy’s understandably optimistic world view, the incompletion is always half full.
Did the Bears line up 6-3, 306-pound left tackle Charles Leno Jr. at wide receiver earlier this season so Trubisky would be able to spot the open target?
Tweet from Tribune Sports Editor Amanda Kaschube: “the Bears are in first in the NFC
North and their QB has a neck beard. what year is it?’’
Email from Richard W: “It’s deja Glennon all over again.’’
The NFL claimed it won’t change the wording on its roughing-the-passer rule, but the league sent out a video aimed at instructing on-field officials to interpret it differently.
Clay Matthews’ laughable roughingthe-passer penalties reportedly weren’t on the video, so it is presumed that call will not be made, and it’s about time.
The rule against landing on the quarterback with full body weight has been around since 1995 but was made a point of emphasis this season, and it became overemphasized as if the officials worked on commission.
Indications are the NFL will resort to common sense because you can’t use a form tackle to sack a quarterback without landing on him. Sounds like the NFL discovered physics late and grudgingly, same as it came to chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
We’ve seen this kind of walk- back before from the self-indicting NFL. The league changed its interpretation of a stupid rule during the preseason when it instituted penalties for players who lowered their heads to tackle. You know, the way every player has been taught. After a controversy in preseason games, the league instructed officials to ignore inadvertent helmet contact, and the controversy went away even though players have continued to lower their heads at the point of collision.
Both rules were instituted in the NFL’s typically ham-handed act of faking concern about player safety while continuing to force teams to play Thursday nights. But changing the interpretation of the rules takes much of the safety out of it. So without admitting it, the NFL is admitting there’s no way to make football safe.
The Choice (and remember, death is not an option): The NFL trying to legislate a sack or the NFL trying to legislate a catch?
Jon Lester has a 1.52 ERA this month, in case you’re wondering why you’ve spent all of Septem- ber saying, “That’s why the Cubs signed Jon Lester.”
“The wild-card game can maybe take a couple years off your life,” Kyle Schwarber said, and I’m thinking, that’s saying something for a guy who watches Carl Edwards Jr. pitch.
Even when Edwards escapes a jam, by Official Emotional Terror Alert Level still hangs at “Joe Maddon is just trolling us now.”
What’s up, Mick Kelleher?