Bears coach Matt Nagy takes a lot of critical questions about quarterback Mitch Trubisky. So you can’t blame him for taking advantage of every opportunity to set the record straight.
Asked at his Monday news conference if Trubisky was missing open receivers, Nagy veered to a second-and-10 pass intended for Allen Robinson over the middle in the Bears’ final-minute, game-winning drive Sunday against the Broncos. Trubisky’s pass in a critical moment was off the mark — seemingly thrown behind Robinson — and fell incomplete.
“Whenever you watch that play, because you don’t know the specifics of our offense, you would say that was a bad throw, right?” Nagy said. “But guess what? It wasn’t. You want to know why? In that route specifically it was supposed to be a flat route — he was supposed to flatten it off. But because he went high, it looked like a bad throw, right?
“So when everybody sees that, who does [the blame] go to? The quarterback, right? But really he’s throwing it to where he’s supposed to throw it. So sometimes there’s that, too. And that all plays into this whole thing.”
That’s all well and good, and a fair explanation of how every misfire isn’t always Trubisky’s fault. But regardless of who is culpable, it leads to another question: Why is the Bears’ offense so out of sync?
Robinson’s mistake isn’t the crime of the century. But the team’s franchise quarterback and No. 1 receiver not being on the same page in a key moment of a crucial game is the snapshot that illustrates the disappointing performance of the Bears’ offense.
After two games, the Bears seem like they’re still in the formative stage of Nagy’s offense — or worse, regressing — when they were expected to soar. The Bears are 30th in the NFL in total offense (263.5 points per game), 31st in points (9.5) and 29th in yards per play (4.4).
Nagy pointed to the need for more “chunk” plays, gains of 10 or more yards that generally are automatic first downs and help the offense get into a rhythm.
“We just need more explosive plays,” Nagy said.
Trubisky gets his share of the blame. The third-year quarterback ranks 31st in the NFL in passer rating (65.0) and threw for just 120 yards against the Broncos. And the pressure is only increasing as expectations grow.
“For us, our own expectation is not to be 31st in the NFL in offense right now, I can tell you that,” Nagy said. “And that comes down to scoring, right? We know we need to be better. As the season goes on, we have an amount of trust in ourselves that we as coaches and we as an offense will get going here. We feel really good that when we do get this going, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Nagy does his best to deflect attention from Trubisky, which gets more and more difficult as Trubisky struggles while fellow 2017 first-round pick Patrick Mahomes seems to reach new heights every week with the Chiefs. But in Week 3 of Year 2 in Nagy’s offense, one expectation is coming into focus: Trubisky isn’t being counted on to put this offense on his shoulders. On the contrary, Nagy seems to put the onus on himself and the offense to give Trubisky the best chance to succeed.
“I know to everybody else it comes down to that one spot [quarterback], but to me it comes down to everything,” Nagy said. “There are so many parts included in this. He gets a lot of that [criticism], no doubt. But it’s getting the run game going, making sure we have our execution in the pass game and different elements of the pass game, me calling things at the right time. It’s all of us together.”
