The Bears have staggered for weeks and now begin a meaningless stretch of six games with no hope for the playoffs. That’s not unusual for this organization over the last three decades, but this epic failure is different.
It’s more than a failure, really. To whatever extent it’s reasonable to call something in sports a crisis, that’s what they’re experiencing at Halas Hall right now.
There’s no bigger disappointment in the NFL than the Bears, who came off an NFC North title as a Super Bowl favorite and rolled into training camp talking dynasty.
Instead, at 4-6 and fresh off another embarrassment, this implosion is the career low for the team’s three most prominent figures: general manager Ryan Pace, coach Matt Nagy and quarterback Mitch Trubisky.
It has become a national shame, and surely the rest of the country is reeling from what it endured Sunday. Down 10-0 at halftime, NBC’s Al Michaels described it as “a typical Bears game,” and slid them a backhanded compliment that their offense looked, “slow, but not as slow as they have been recently.”
In months, Nagy has gone from next big thing and Coach of the Year to spinning his wheels in search of solutions that always elude him. Trubisky has tumbled from top draft pick to Exhibit A in the case to replace Pace.
That brings us to the Bears’ latest debacle: A haphazard, questionable handling of a hip injury so severe that it prompted Nagy to pull Trubisky in the fourth quarter against the Rams, but one that healed enough in three days for him to be a full participant in practice Wednesday and possibly starting Sunday against the Giants.
Trubisky took a hard shot to the right hip just before halftime against the Rams, but didn’t look gimpy. He played through it into the fourth quarter before a surprise appearance by Chase Daniel.
Trubisky didn’t go to the medical tent, there’s no footage of Daniel warming up despite NBC’s multitude of cameras and the broadcast cut to Trubisky several times during the Rams’ touchdown drive with no indication anything was amiss. It prompted a speculative, but logical digression by Michaels and Cris Collinsworth as the national audience listened.
They pointed out that career backup Daniel isn’t the long-term answer for the Bears, but Collinsworth suggested, “This might be the long-term answer from Matt Nagy about what he thinks of his quarterback,” wondered if it was “a desperation move” to spur a comeback and floated the possibility of a fracture in the Nagy-Trubisky relationship.
“It is opening Pandora’s Box about Mitch Trubisky with this move,” he said.
There were a lot of thoughts in those moments of uncertainty that the Bears certainly want to dispel, and the team sent word of Trubisky’s hip issue a few plays after Daniel entered.
It’s likely that the injury and Trubisky’s play factored into Nagy’s decision, but if it was, Nagy wouldn’t want to acknowledge the latter publicly and leave Trubisky exposed to the criticism. He also wouldn’t want to reverse a recent declaration that he would never pull Trubisky over performance.
And, quite frankly, Nagy is doing his job by protecting him.
Coaches aren’t fully transparent — not even nice guys like Nagy — and no one expects them to be. Giving partial truths and positive spins in press conferences isn’t even wrong. It’s part of the deal. Nagy can’t divulge everything he thinks about his team, including the quarterback his embattled boss drafted before he got here.
Trubisky completed 24 of 43 passes for 190 yards with a touchdown and an interception for a 65.1 rating with the benefit of a mostly clean pocket. A typical game, as Michaels would say.
There have been 91 300-yard passing games this NFL season, none by Trubisky. No starting quarterback averages fewer net yards per attempt than his 5.6.
Any improvement he’s made under Nagy, a touted quarterback guru, is indiscernible to the naked eye. And an offensive-minded coach should know better than to have him throw 43 times.
Or 45 times, like he did while losing to the Packers.
Or 54 in defeat against the Saints.
Trubisky’s receivers let him down at times and the offensive line has been unsteady, but he’s not a player who can overcome that. Unless everything else goes perfectly, he’s not winning.
The other two top quarterbacks from his draft class, Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, lift their teams. When everything is on fire, they find a way.
Every great game those two put up makes Pace look worse for bypassing them. And if the Bears are about to start over at quarterback and attempt a significant overhaul, it must be asked if they’re substantially better off than when he started in 2015. He’s the architect of a lost season with no easy answers to ensure the next one is better.
It’s nearing time to decide whether these three lose their jobs over this mess.
Nagy is safe for at least one more season. Pace has a contract through 2021, but how could the Bears let him choose their next quarterback? And the fact that they need a next quarterback — plus a veteran to bridge the gap next season — puts a period on the Trubisky era.
Those will be Thanksgiving dinner topics in Chicago next week, and it’s not at all what the Bears wanted the conversation to be at this point.
