Bears coach Matt Nagy said the team sees no benefit to shutting down quarterback Mitch Trubisky, less than a day after they took him out of a 17-7 loss to the Rams with what they called a right hip pointer.
“No, because that’s just not … we’ll see where he’s at,” Nagy told reporters at Halas Hall on Monday. “You know, as we go here the next couple days, we’ll see where he’s at. But that’s not what he wants and that’s not what we want. We want to keep growing.”
Of course, Trubisky has to feel healthy first, a discussion that will continue into this week. If so, he’s the starter.
“Absolutely,” Nagy said. “Absolutely.”
Sunday night, Trubisky said he hurt his hip on the final drive of the second quarter. Nagy reiterated the same Monday, saying he was kneed in the back and hip area by Michael Brockers on a third-and-8 sack with 39 seconds to play.
The injury didn’t require Trubisky to go into the medical tent in the second quarter, Nagy said, because the quarterback had it looked at in the locker room at halftime.
There was some confusion Sunday night about when Nagy knew about the injury. He said Monday he was made aware of it at halftime, but didn’t start watching Trubisky’s specific moments until he was warned that it was tightening up later in the game.
He said he was aware of outside skepticism about the injury, particularly because it wasn’t immediately communicated to the NBC crew covering the game.
“I’m aware through others that have told me that,” he said. “That’s why in these type of situations, it’s hard. Right after the game when you’re interviewing and you’re talking about the different timelines and everything, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on right after the game.
“This one’s so simple because there’s nothing but pure honesty in all of this. Literally, everything that I just told you conversation-wise, every decision that was made, it had zero to do with his play. It was completely based off of the injury that he had last night and where he’s at, 100 percent.”
Trubisky argued with Nagy when he spoke to him on the sideline and said he was putting Chase Daniel in with 3:24 to play.
“The thing that you love about Mitch is that he’s extremely tough — I love that about him,” Nagy said. “But at the same time, he’s at a point where you could see that it was painful. So what I had to do was I wanted him to know coming from me that he needs to be brutally honest with me in regards to his pain and where he’s at. And that’s exactly what it was.
“I sat there and I told him, I said, ‘Listen, man. We appreciate your toughness. We appreciate you being as tough as you can possibly be and want to stay in the game. But I need to be able to make a decision because there’s a fine line of that pain or being injured to where it affects how you play or decisions that you make because of being injured.’”
