Nice article in today's Tribune explaining the coaching staff's confidence in their projection that (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky will improve:
Rich Campbell wrote:
As Dave Ragone exited the Bears locker room the night of Jan. 6, shuffling down the row of stiff upper lips and quivering ones, he stopped at Mitch (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky’s stall.
The Bears’ season had ended suddenly with a 16-15 loss to the Eagles on a wayward field-goal attempt that was not part of the script. Not for a team that won 12 games and cultivated a deep belief in the magic it had created.
Ragone, though, sifted through the shock and anguish and found promise. As the quarterbacks coach and only member of the offensive staff who has been with the Bears since (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky arrived in 2017, the pit in his stomach yielded a bit to pride. His guy had just balled out during the biggest moment of his young career.
In a playoff game, down by one to the defending Super Bowl champs with 48 seconds remaining and one timeout, (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky completed two of three passes for 33 yards to set up a decisive 43-yard kick.
“At the end of the day, you can’t control if a guy catches it, tips a ball at the line of scrimmage, makes or misses,” Ragone recalled saying to (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky. “The fact you made the right decisions on that last drive in a situation you’ve never been in, if you can’t build off that as a core foundation, then we need to talk.”
Ragone’s orders to (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky, then, were clear. Take that fourth quarter into the offseason. Seize confidence from the final drive. Make sure it fosters development, regardless of Cody Parkey’s missed kick. And be ready to show that growth in the nationally televised season opener Sept. 5 against the Packers.
Because (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky did everything required in that make-or-break moment to position the Bears to win. He ended up within inches of rewriting the top line of his resume.
Last-minute, come-from-behind drive to beat the defending champs in the playoffs.
That would be a steel beam in any quarterback’s legacy. The kicker just missed the dang kick.
Now, there are no asterisks here. Nor would (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky ask for one. Especially considering how ordinary his play was through the first three quarters of that game.
Citywide chatter about his uneven practice performances this summer filled the vacuum created by his lack of preseason game snaps. It continues to fuel the tug of war between his supporters and detractors, with both sides desperate for new, better data from the opener against the Packers.
Surely, though, the (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky debate would be framed more favorably for him if a kick he watched from the sideline had split the uprights.
Within the team, at least, that fact spawns no self-pity. Rather, (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky and his coaches have used that final drive to build his confidence as though January’s DNA test proved he has the clutch gene, double doink be damned.
“It doesn’t matter how big the stage is,” (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky said when asked what he took from the final drive of last season. “If all 11 guys are on the same page and we believe in what we’re doing and we execute it, then plays are going to work. It’s really as simple as that.”
‘Put it behind you’
Just before (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky took the stage that final time, coach Matt Nagy grabbed him. The Bears still had a pulse because Tarik Cohen’s electric kickoff-return cameo set up the offense at their 48-yard line.
With (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky smiling back at him, Nagy delivered one last message: “This, he said, “is where the story begins.”
Those words were as generous as they were inspirational. (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky’s performance to that point in the playoff game had been mixed, at best.
It wasn’t all his fault. The Bears offensive line played one of its worst games of the season against the Eagles’ strong, fast front. Tight end Trey Burton’s surprising groin injury the previous day allowed the Eagles to devote defenders to Cohen, limiting him to 27 yards from scrimmage on four touches.
(Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky also injured his right heel on a second-quarter scramble. But he played through that and seemed unaffected when he launched his worst throw of the game just before halftime.
On the run, he slung a pass 26 yards into the end zone, where the Eagles’ zone coverage featured two defenders on Taylor Gabriel.
Safety Tre Sullivan will never have an easier interception in his life. As if he had dipped his gloves in bacon grease, the ball went through his hands and allowed the Bears to salvage three points.
So let the record show that before the football gods damned the Bears to an early offseason and left (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky without full credit for his fourth-quarter surge, they gave him a considerable reprieve.
“You don't play as well as you want in the first half — I mean, who cares?” (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky said immediately after the game. “Put it behind you. There's always a next play to be had.”
That, itself, indicated growth. Throughout last season, Nagy, Ragone and offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich painted a picture of a quarterback who tends to struggle flushing negative plays from his mental engine.
In the biggest game of his life, though, (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky compartmentalized as well as he ever had.
Over a span of eight passes in the fourth quarter, he completed seven for 115 yards and a touchdown. Once the Bears finally identified the backside mismatch between Allen Robinson and cornerback Avonte Maddox, (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky was surgical.
“I was more proud of his decisions,” Ragone said. “I know he made some throws, but the decisions on which he made those throws, that’s how you replicate that success. Consistent, productive decisions are how you stay in this business a long time.”
‘The kid is going to do something’
All eyes were glued to (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky as he spoke to Nagy on the sideline and then trotted onto the field.
Could he make the moment his?
He at least carried positive momentum out to the huddle. Two drives earlier, he completed consecutive passes for 19, 34 and 22 yards, the last a touchdown to Allen Robinson.
“The best part … was the look in his eye when Coach Nagy was calling the plays as he walked off the sideline into the huddle,” Ragone recalled. “I looked at the backup quarterbacks at the time and said, ‘Man, I’ve got a great feeling here. The kid is going to do something.’”
Teammates felt it too. In that unfamiliar situation, (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky was a steadying force.
“He was super chill,” left tackle Charles Leno said. “He was just like, ‘Let’s just go down there and get this win.’”
After a first-down incompletion, (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky hit Robinson with a back-shoulder ball on the right sideline for 25 yards to the Eagles 33. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call it his best throw of his career, given the situation and degree of difficulty.
The Eagles had a deep safety in the right half of the field, and Maddox sank in coverage underneath Robinson. For (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky to get the ball over Maddox and into Robinson’s hands before the safety arrived, he had to throw it on time through a window of about two feet.
“He knew the area I would be in,” Robinson said this summer. “I knew the area I needed to be in. He knew to give me a shot, and we were able to come down with it.”
Robinson and (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky separately explained how those big fourth-quarter completions resulted from reps throughout the season. Eventually, the offense grew to understand how they would attack teams on any given play depending on the coverage.
That knowledge carries into 2019. Pair that with (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky’s exposure to all sorts of situations, especially a playoff atmosphere, and it amounts to the experience factor that prompts the Bears to forecast a significant step forward for the franchise quarterback.
“This position is so predicated on confidence, and it’s inner confidence,” Ragone said. “If you can’t get confidence from that last drive, there’s probably something a little off. He should have it, and hopefully he does.”
He’ll need it too. To pick up against the Packers where he left off against the Eagles. To get the Bears back to the playoffs. And to make sure that resume features a new top line before long.
_________________
Antonio Gramsci wrote:
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
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