The Events That Brought Nick Foles To The Bears.....

[soulman]

 

The 10 days last October that shook the Bears' faith in Mitch Trubisky

Dan Wiederer, Chicago Tribune  https://www.yahoo.com/news/10-days-last-october-shook-093200133.html

July 24, 2020, 3:32 AM

 

 

CHICAGO — Remember that ire in Matt Nagy’s face, the irate tone, the contentious incredulity?

If it had been a cartoon, mushroom clouds would have been bursting from Nagy’s ears with a train whistle screaming above his head. But this was real life, the postmortem after the Chicago Bears’ 17-16 home loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Oct. 27.

A promising Sunday had ended in distress when kicker Eddy Pineiro pulled his 41-yard field-goal attempt, the fall breeze steering the football just outside the left upright.

By inches. As time expired.

And that kick had missed its mark after Nagy grew anxious and conservative in the final minute, opting to have his offense take a knee and a 1-yard loss on first down with 43 seconds remaining rather than try to shorten the game-deciding attempt.

That decision had left many perplexed even before Pineiro tried the kick, prompting questions to the Bears coach in the hour after the loss.

“Matt, can you walk us through your thought process on taking the knee before the final kick?”

Nagy bristled. He asserted he had “zero thought of running the ball” in that situation. He feared a potential fumble. Or a loss of 3 or 4 yards.

A follow-up suggestion that quarterback Mitch Trubisky could have thrown a pass made Nagy’s head spin. “Throw the football? Right then and there?” he snapped. “What happens if you take a sack or there’s a fumble?”

You lose the game.

“That’s right. Yeah,” Nagy said. “Exactly. So, no, there was zero thought of that. I’ll just be brutally clear. Zero thought of throwing the football. Zero thought of running the football. You understand me?”

Remember the resulting firestorm?

The inquest into why Nagy had ditched his aggressive mentality.

The revelation that Pineiro ideally wouldn’t have wanted to try that kick from the left hash.

The follow-ups on whether the end-of-game communication processes had broken down.

Yet lost amid all that confusion was a much more disconcerting reality. This was the critical point when the Bears’ faith in Trubisky truly began to unravel. This was the unacceptable loss that never should have happened. This was the nadir of a taxing 10-day period in which Trubisky not only failed to steady a rocking ship but instead ripped a hole in the bow as he attempted to toss the anchor.

This is where the 2019 Bears began to sink. This is a big reason general manager Ryan Pace traded a fourth-round pick to the Jaguars in March to acquire Nick Foles. This is why the Bears declined the 2021 fifth-year option on Trubisky’s rookie deal, a $24.8 million price tag.

This is why Trubisky now finds himself facing an open competition for the starting quarterback role.

———

As Nagy stood on that Soldier Field dais after the loss to the Chargers, he realized he was wading through a flood of season-defining frustration.

With even a shred of reliable quarterback play, Bears coaches and players would have been exhaling and trumpeting that popular “A win is a win” NFL hymn. The Bears would have been 4-3 and marching forward with relief rather than remorse.

Instead, after Trubisky committed two inexcusable fourth-quarter turnovers and misfired on a surefire 58-yard touchdown pass with less than 10 minutes to play, the Bears lost at home as 3 1/2-point favorites to an injury-riddled and exhausted Chargers team that hadn’t even played very well.

Their losing streak hit three. They fell below .500. They were grasping for solutions on offense and growing exhausted doing so.

Internally, players and coaches resisted the urge to cast blame or point fingers. But suddenly, many began asking questions about the reliability of the starting quarterback, debating among themselves the crucial mistakes being made and the big plays being missed.

An erosion of confidence accelerated. A championship-caliber team had quickly reverted into a middle-of-the-road also-ran.

———

Rewind to the previous week. The Bears were back from London, back from their open date. Trubisky was back from the torn labrum in his left shoulder that he suffered on the first drive against the Vikings in Week 4.

For a team with legitimate Super Bowl hopes, this was page-turning time. The football gods had provided a remedy too. The Saints were coming to Chicago with quarterback Drew Brees and running back Alvin Kamara declared out with injuries.

Optimism bubbled throughout Halas Hall. The Bears saw a golden opportunity to ****** a winnable home game and improve to 4-2.

But then?

Trubisky’s return to practice was uneven. He was a full participant for the final three practices of the week. Still, on that Friday afternoon, the Bears listed him as questionable for the game. It was an odd designation for a player who, officially anyway, hadn’t been limited at practice.

It hadn’t been an awful week, but Trubisky hadn’t been consistently sharp. Too many wheels seemed to be turning in his head. Too much clutter. Not enough clarity.

The coaching staff was having difficulty assessing how Trubisky was balancing the week’s physical demands with his mental responsibilities.

Nagy admitted Trubisky’s shaky return from a shoulder injury in 2018 — a three-interception mess in a prime-time win over the Rams — was in the back of his mind.

“How do we prevent that from happening again?” Nagy said. “And that’s the mental side.”

———

The game against the Saints might have been the most dispiriting of the entire season, a brutal 36-25 loss that was nowhere near that close.

On the Bears’ second drive, on third-and-5, on a play Trubisky loved, the X’s and O’s offered a ready-made chain-moving completion to Taylor Gabriel on an out route near the left sideline.

Trubisky’s footwork was a mess. He fired toward Gabriel, but the pass detoured like a Mitch Williams wild pitch. High and outside and all the way to the backstop.

Call out the punt team.

After the game, Trubisky seemed perplexed by that misfire.

“That was one of my favorite third downs all week,” he said. “I ripped it all week in practice. And it just didn’t translate to the game. I don’t know why.”

That throw was a tone setter, a sloppy and inexplicable incompletion that created a surge of unease on the Bears sideline. It was part of a first half in which the offense failed to pick up a first down on five of its seven possessions and managed just 81 total yards on 29 plays.

Nagy also was aggravated by an 8-yard sack Trubisky took on first down in the second quarter with the Bears near the red zone in a 9-7 game. That blunder came on a run-pass option that probably should have been a handoff to David Montgomery. Trubisky kept the ball instead, didn’t get rid of it quickly and was engulfed by Saints defensive end Cam Jordan.

Loss of 8.

Second-and-18.

Instead of a potential game-changing touchdown, the Bears had to claw for a field goal.

Those were the only points the offense scored in its first 11 possessions.

Eventually, the defense came undone in the second half, had no magic to keep the Bears within reach and wound up allowing a season-worst 424 yards. And to punctuate Trubisky’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, he threw the ball away to avoid pressure on fourth down in the fourth quarter.

The disbelief and disgruntlement spread across Soldier Field.

Trubisky finally threw two touchdown passes in the final three minutes but only after the Bears had fallen behind by 26. The next day Nagy stamped both as utterly meaningless.

“To me it is garbage time,” he said. “And that’s not the mode we want to be in. I could (not) care less about those stats at the end of the game.”

———

Predictably, sports talk radio went nuclear that Monday, a justifiable Trubisky pile-on that wouldn’t subside. Even his biggest believers were running out of reality-based reasons to rally behind him.

Suddenly, large chunks of the fan base were feeling worried that they had been duped.

This wasn’t a Super Bowl-contending team after all. And the starting quarterback, drafted with the No. 2 pick in 2017, certainly didn’t look like the long-term answer at the sport’s most important position.

Pace has always gushed with admiration for Brees, the two having spent 10 seasons together in New Orleans. He always appreciated how Brees’ talent, leadership and consistent playmaking so frequently steadied and propelled the Saints.

“An eraser,” Pace has often called Brees, noting how stellar quarterback play can make up for a poor play call or a bad roster decision or a clunky outing by the rest of the team.

Which circles things back to that Chargers game, the one Trubisky hoped to use to erase the Bears’ irritating struggles against the Saints.

“We’ve got a good opportunity to fix things,” he said that week.

Alas …

More of the same.

The Bears moved the ball in the first half but failed to score a touchdown in three red-zone trips. Included in that was a four-play, zero-yard field-goal “drive” after a Kyle Fuller interception gave the offense possession inside the Chargers 5.

Then in the fourth quarter, three tide-turning Trubisky miscues kept the door ajar for a Chargers rally.

First, with 13:07 left and the Bears ahead 16-10, Trubisky didn’t recognize cornerback Casey Hayward peeling off Anthony Miller’s deep route. He forced a ball up the right sideline toward tight end Trey Burton, and Hayward snatched it.

On the Bears’ next drive, with 9:39 left, Trubisky had Gabriel streaking behind 36-year-old linebacker Thomas Davis, wide open for a 58-yard touchdown pass. But he overthrew Gabriel by 3 yards.

“We had it,” Nagy said the next day, “and we didn’t hit it.”

It should’ve been the dagger. It wasn’t.

On the next snap, Trubisky made things worse, holding the ball too long and getting stripped by Melvin Ingram. The Chargers turned that takeaway into the go-ahead touchdown.

These are the pivotal moments at crucial points in a season that ultimately define an NFL quarterback.

Unfortunately for the Bears, Trubisky’s late-game failures triggered a disastrous domino effect. On that perfect fall afternoon by Lake Michigan, those struggles canceled another solid showing from the defense. They forced the offense to come from behind on the final drive rather than run out the clock on a much-needed victory. They led Nagy to make an uncharacteristic and sloppy final-minute decision.

They pushed Pineiro into a pressure-packed last-second kick that never should have been needed.

One failure became two, then three.

It sent the Bears frantically into cleanup mode.

For franchises with standout quarterbacks, such calamities rarely occur. The hero swoops in at the end, does his job with relative ease and Sunday night recedes with everyone smiling in relief.

Instead, after two irksome home losses filled with Trubisky struggles, the Bears season carried a feeling as if everything was slipping away. Frustrations surfaced. The urge to press creeped in. An entire offense felt lost.

The next week in Philadelphia, the offense netted 9 yards on 20 plays in the first half as the Bears fell behind by double digits on the way to their fourth consecutive loss. Unofficially, their playoff hopes had been decimated.

———

Trubisky’s future in Chicago is in doubt. Now it’s his turn to answer.

The 2020 Bears understand they can’t afford stretches of inconsistency. The offense has to find itself quickly, forge an identity and establish some rhythm.

This is why the demands on Trubisky from the coaching staff have become louder with a growing checklist of orders from Nagy, new offensive coordinator Bill Lazor and new quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo.

— Become a master at understanding coverages.

— Don’t get tricked by defensive disguises.

— Polish footwork.

— Become more trusting inside a noisy pocket.

— Exhibit a touchdown-to-checkdown mentality on a regular basis.

— Make proper pre-snap adjustments.

— Be more productive inside the red zone.

— Make plays when plays are there to be made.

— Make plays when nothing is there, too.

— Play with juice.

— Exhibit command in the preparation process.

— Exhibit command of the offensive system.

— Exhibit command of the team.

— Don’t let one bad day snowball into a bad week.

The Bears haven’t ruled out a long-awaited Trubisky breakthrough. But they are no longer in a position to prioritize patience over productivity. Lazor’s direct but affable encouragement should resonate with Trubisky when training camp finally begins.

“It’s up to you,” Lazor has said. “Approach every day knowing, ‘Hey, I get to have more control than anyone else of what my story’s going to be, what my future is.’ ”

To this point, Trubisky’s flashes of brilliance have been too infrequent and superseded by his high-profile struggles.

For the Bears, the momentum of a magical 2018 is long gone, at best a distant memory. The window of opportunity that, a year ago, appeared wide open seems to be sliding shut.

On just about every level, a pivotal season awaits with the fan base’s patience worn thin and the internal urgency to produce results heightened.

Trubisky will get one more chance to right himself, to revive his career with the Bears. He understands what’s at stake as the first practice of 2020 nears.

“I still feel like this is my team,” he said earlier this summer.

Now comes the task of rallying support for that assertion, then playing in a way that retains that confidence. It won’t be easy. Because of COVID-19 interruptions, the quarterback competition the Bears envisioned in the winter has been amended and will be significantly abbreviated.

A traditional training camp won’t be possible. The Bears won’t have a single preseason game to enhance the duel.

Trubisky will have to be sharp and consistent in a condensed package of competitive practices. Nagy is eager to judge his quarterback’s improvement and assess his mindset.

The clock is ticking. A replacement is waiting. The margin for error is thin.

———

©2020 Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

[soulman]

This may not be the perfect title but undoubtedly it led to the belief on the part of both Nagy and Pace that Mitch had run out of his patience based chances.

This was a crucial period as far as getting the ship righted and gaining momentum again and Mitch was not up to it.  It's also the point in which I decided it was time to look for other vet options to replace Mitch in 2020.  Although at this point I still believe he has the edge over Foles that edge is paper thin now and could even be lost during camp unless Mitch can actually prove he can step up and lead his offense. 

I don't question Foles ability to lead but with Mitch I'm still unsure of it.  He has a mountain of issues to overcome.

Edited July 24, 2020 by soulman

[topwop1]

I still don't see how Mitch doesn't at least get a few games in the early season to show if he's made any progress before they completely end that experiment and go to Foles.

Don't know how they can just start Foles without a proper offseason and no preseason games this year.

[soulman]

We've gotten enough good reports on his offseason to lead me to believe that in combination with no preseason games Mitch should get the nod to start game one IF he doesn't suck in camp like he did last year.  That's my belief so far.

[Heinz D.]

On 7/24/2020 at 1:56 PM, soulman said:

This is why the demands on Trubisky from the coaching staff have become louder with a growing checklist of orders from Nagy, new offensive coordinator Bill Lazor and new quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo.

— Become a master at understanding coverages.

— Don’t get tricked by defensive disguises.

— Polish footwork.

— Become more trusting inside a noisy pocket.

— Exhibit a touchdown-to-checkdown mentality on a regular basis.

— Make proper pre-snap adjustments.

— Be more productive inside the red zone.

— Make plays when plays are there to be made.

— Make plays when nothing is there, too.

— Play with juice.

— Exhibit command in the preparation process.

— Exhibit command of the offensive system.

— Exhibit command of the team.

— Don’t let one bad day snowball into a bad week.

My god, that list...it's just UTTERLY terrifying. If that was assembled with mentions of their intent from the coaching staff--I think it means that Mitch is clearly done. In Chicago, anyway.

Oh, I'd also forgotten about Mitch throwing it away on fourth down in that Saints game. Thanks, Wiederer. 🤪

On 7/26/2020 at 7:34 AM, topwop1 said:

I still don't see how Mitch doesn't at least get a few games in the early season to show if he's made any progress before they completely end that experiment and go to Foles.

That's the most probable scenario. I wouldn't rule out Foles being clearly superior in practice, though. 

[soulman]

Here's a take from Jeff Huges at DBB who thinks the so called competition for #1 is garbage talk and that without a preseason to evaluate them a decision has likely been made already.  I don't necessarily agree with his thinking but I do believe it's still Mitch's job as long as he can keep it.

As for that laundry list of skills I believe any successful QB or any successful person in business has a similar list much of which they either know and understand somewhat intuitively so it doesn't need to be as mountainous a task as it may appear.  But if it is.....then yeah, Mitch's goose may be cooked if he fails at it.

 

If a Quarterback Competition Happens in the Forest…

Jeff Hughes | August 10th, 2020

---

The quotes came from new Bears quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo.

“At the end of the day, which guy’s raising the other ten guys’ level.”

“At the end of the day, it’s who moves our football team and converts on third down.”

Question. One word. When?

When is this raising of the other ten guys’ level happening?

When is the football team being moved?

When are these third downs being converted?

I might be having an Allen Iverson moment but…practice? We talking about…practice?

Quarterbacks are always the story in the NFL and a quarterback competition over the summer is the juiciest story there is for hungry football writers. But there are three things fans must consider before investing too much into this battle.

(1) Without preseason games, there won’t be anything resembling an obvious winner. Preseason games would have allowed the whole of the football world to evaluate the play of these two men and accurately assess which gave the Bears the best chance to win. Preseason games would have made fans active participants in the competition, enabling them to generate their own thoughts and opinions based on the palpable data of performance.

(2) The media will have their say on the competition but most of the important moments in camp practices, the parts where the actual game plan is installed and executed, happen after the media is sent away. You’ll learn far more from Adam Jahns’ insider reporting on Nagy’s thoughts than Brad Biggs’ impressions from a few passing drills.

 

(3) If the team is basing this competition on practice, the football ain’t getting moved that far and third downs ain’t getting converted too often. The Bears have one of the league’s elite defenses. Just because Foles and Trubisky and the offensive line struggle against Mack and the boys doesn’t mean they’ll struggled in the opener against a lackluster Lions unit.

So who will win the competition? My guess is the winner will be whomever the Bears hierarchy wants it to be. If the Bears want Mitch Trubisky to be the starting quarterback against Detroit as Nick Foles warms up in the bullpen, they’ll manufacture a competition that achieves that result. If they want to move on from Trubisky and start the Foles era, they’ll reach that end as well. Without outside observers weighing in, without media eyes on the important plays and fan eyes on preseason action, the Bears can claim whatever winner they wish. Who is going to argue with them? How do you solve and equation when you’re not shown the numbers?

This is a quarterback competition happening in darkness, in the shadows. This is the football equivalent of choosing a new pope. Nobody gets to see the debate inside the Vatican. The faithful stand outside and wait for the answer. And now we, the Chicago Bears faithful, will metaphorically congregate outside Halas Hall, waiting for the plume of smoke.

[WindyCity]

You have to see if Mitch has improved. See if the stock rebounds before you sell at rock bottom.

You know what Foles is and he will still be that in week 3 or 4 if a change needs to be made. In fact Foles has been better when not the guy and coming in to save the day.

[G08]

There's a lot of different spin the Bears can use to trot Trubisky out there. He knows the offense better, Foles hasn't had enough time or reps to really show what he can do, etc.

In my mind, the only way Foles is the starter week 1 is if Trubisky God-forbid is hurt or Trubisky ****s the bed during the "competition". I've long maintained that if the QB competition is a tie, Trubisky will be the winner.

That being said, I would have to think he is on a short leash. 3-4 games max.

[G08]

I think the only way Trubisky finds success is if he reacts through plays rather than thinks. I saw a lot of thinking and second-guessing last season and it was painful. One in particular on a botched RPO where he looked to the wrong side of the field for his pass read made me realize he was drowning.

[WindyCity]

8 minutes ago, G08 said:

I think the only way Trubisky finds success is if he reacts through plays rather than thinks. I saw a lot of thinking and second-guessing last season and it was painful. One in particular on a botched RPO where he looked to the wrong side of the field for his pass read made me realize he was drowning.

We also need the offense to be better around him. That goes for Foles as well.

Leno and Massie were bad last season

Daniels was bad at C

Long/Coward were unplayable bad.

The TEs were awful

Cohen no showed the season

 

Only elite QBs are going to overcome half of that.

 

[G08]

3 minutes ago, WindyCity said:

We also need the offense to be better around him. That goes for Foles as well.

Leno and Massie were bad last season

Daniels was bad at C

Long/Coward were unplayable bad.

The TEs were awful

Cohen no showed the season

 

Only elite QBs are going to overcome half of that.

 

We did nothing to help him out in that regard, I agree.

I'd love nothing more than to be a heavy inside/outside zone team with deep shots built in based off playaction boots and waggles. Think 49ers offense with maybe a little more of a vertical approach.

I'm still very, very high on David Montgomery. We need to be ***-kickers at the LOS and let him do his job.

[WindyCity]

4 hours ago, G08 said:

We did nothing to help him out in that regard, I agree.

I'd love nothing more than to be a heavy inside/outside zone team with deep shots built in based off playaction boots and waggles. Think 49ers offense with maybe a little more of a vertical approach.

I'm still very, very high on David Montgomery. We need to be ***-kickers at the LOS and let him do his job.

TE is the spot where we upgraded the talent.

I don’t know what to expect from the OL, I actually think it will be our Achilles heel.

[G08]

17 minutes ago, WindyCity said:

I don’t know what to expect from the OL, I actually think it will be our Achilles heel.

I don't know either... they seem to be in shape and motivated. Is Castillo legit or is he a hack? Or is he just average?

[WindyCity]

8 minutes ago, G08 said:

I don't know either... they seem to be in shape and motivated. Is Castillo legit or is he a hack? Or is he just average?

I think it is a lot of talk trying to cover the fact they didn’t upgrade a group that was bad last season.

Talking up Castillo, Ifedi, Spriggs, seems like grasping because they know it was an issue and they know people think they didn’t do enough 

[beardown3231]

1 hour ago, G08 said:

I don't know either... they seem to be in shape and motivated. Is Castillo legit or is he a hack? Or is he just average?

My issue with Castillo is simple- why was he out of a job last year?

 

On 8/9/2020 at 2:01 PM, Heinz D. said:

My god, that list...it's just UTTERLY terrifying. If that was assembled with mentions of their intent from the coaching staff--I think it means that Mitch is clearly done. In Chicago, anyway.

Oh, I'd also forgotten about Mitch throwing it away on fourth down in that Saints game. Thanks, Wiederer. 🤪

That's the most probable scenario. I wouldn't rule out Foles being clearly superior in practice, though. 

Mitch throwing the ball away on 4th down vs NO was as puzzling of a play I've ever seen in any sport at any level