Bears QB competition won’t begin until they hit the practice field

If you thought hearing about the Chicago Bears’ quarterback competition was getting old already, buckle up for training camp and preseason, where it will dominate local and national conversation.

Mitchell Trubisky and Nick Foles are set to compete for the starting quarterback job, a competition being touted as “fair” and “open.”

In case any clarification was needed, Bears coach Matt Nagy revealed that the quarterback competition hasn’t started in this virtual offseason — and it’s not going to start until they hit the practice field, whenever that may be.

“There’s no competition going on right now over Zoom,” Nagy told reporters Friday, via ChicagoBears.com.

“There’s no way to possibly say the competition has started right now. But when we do get onto the field—depending on when that is—that’s where we are going to have to be really good as coaches in making sure that we provide the best way possible to make it as fair as possible, to where we can evaluate and they can go out and get the exact same reps in the exact same environment, so that we can hopefully make a decision off of that.”

The preseason will play a significant factor in determining the starter, as it’s game experience that matters. In past years, Nagy has kept his starters out of preseason, as a precautionary measure. But that hindered the Bears rather than helped them, especially on offense. But with several competitions — most notably quarterback — preseason is the best way to evaluate these players.

“That’s the best time for us to be able to get the evaluation process going,” Nagy said. “And so we need to get as many reps as we can to be able to see what they’re doing when we do it.

“We’re going to do everything we can, and if we need to have more competition-type levels, 11-on-11-type deals in practice, we’ll do that too. And again, remember this isn’t just for the quarterbacks, but it’s a lot of positions across the board, which will be great.”