Chicago Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky faces an uphill battle to keep his starting job. Nick Foles came in to push him and could end up pushing him to the bench.
Chicago Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky had a tough offseason. General manager Ryan Pace said at the end of the 2019 season that the team would go into the 2020 season with Trubisky as the starter. He then went on to hire a new offensive coordinator and a new quarterbacks coach to help head coach Matt Nagy.
After that, Pace went out and traded the Bears’ fourth-round compensatory draft pick, a really good pick to use on a quality prospect, to the Jacksonville Jaguars for Nick Foles. That was an interesting move since Foles has experience in Nagy’s system and worked with Nagy and the new coaches. Additionally, he had success in that system, having come off the bench and taking the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl win and winning the MVP in the process.
After struggling last season (and basically throughout his career in Chicago), Trubisky faces a tough battle to keep his starter’s job. His troubles with reading defenses and locking on to receivers continue to give him trouble.
Foles does a good job of getting rid of the ball quickly and making good decisions. Trubisky still seems to have difficulty grasping the playbook, something that must change quickly. Foles already has a good understanding of the system and ran it well.
Some suggest running more no-huddle plays to keep Trubisky from overthinking things. That hasn’t really helped him, however.
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Looking at the numbers over the past two seasons, running no-huddle hasn’t helped. In 2018, the Chicago Bears ran 40 non-huddle plays. Trubisky averaged 7.8 yards per attempt but completed just 54.5 percent of his passes. He threw just one touchdown and had two interceptions.
In 2019, the Bears ran more no-huddle plays with 147 plays. His completion percentage went up to 60.5 percent, but his yards per attempt went down to 6. Additionally, he had just one touchdown and three interceptions.
Things are so bad that opponents took shots at Trubisky over his play. Here is what Green Bay Packers cornerback Tramon Williams had to say about Trubisky early last season:
We wanted to make Mitch play quarterback. We knew they had a lot of weapons, we knew they were dangerous, we knew all of those things. But we knew if we could make Mitch play quarterback, that we’d have a chance.
Not exactly the words you want to hear from opponents on your quarterback.
Even when Trubisky finds the open man and throws it to him, he has trouble. He was ranked among the worst deep-ball throwers in the NFL. There were plenty of times when he had open receivers deep but he either overthrew them or underthrew them. He had a wide-open Anthony Miller on a play against the Los Angeles Chargers that likely would’ve resulted in a touchdown. He overthrew Miller, however. On the next play, Trubisky got sacked and fumbled the ball away.
Perhaps all this negativity pushes Trubisky to improve. He needs to use all of that to battle against Foles. Even though he walks with the starters when camp begins, he knows he could be on a ledge and if he doesn’t come out fighting and improve, he’ll fall off that ledge and his career in Chicago could come to an early end.
