Matt Nagy doesn’t want to lay his offense’s struggles at the feet of Mitch Trubisky, but knows they inevitably find their way back to the quarterback.
“I don’t want to put it on one guy,” Nagy said. “But he knows that, and I know that — that it always comes down to me and him.”
Nagy has been a good solider and tried to make it about the coach himself, taking the blame for aspects of the Bears’ offensive struggles ranging from penalties to play-calling, too many personnel groupings to a lack of rhythm.
But at least one of the solutions to the Bears’ struggles is simple: Trubisky needs to make better throws. His 25-yard pass to Allen Robinson, which set up Eddy Pineiro’s game-winning field goal Sunday, was easily his best of the game.
His next game needs many more like them.
A whopping 27.8 percent of Trubisky’s throws thus far this season were classified by Pro Football Focus as “uncatchable.” Only the Panthers’ Cam Newton — who changed his throwing motion after having offseason shoulder surgery — has more.
Too many times, Trubisky’s overthrows are obvious. Sometimes, the mistake is subtle. Nagy detailed the latter in his Monday postmortem following the Bears’ 16-14 win against the Broncos.
About halfway through the second quarter, the Bears faced first-and-10 from their own 42-yard line. Trubisky took the snap and faked a handoff to his left. The Bears double-teamed outside linebacker Von Miller, who rushed between the right tackle and tight end, to buy Trubisky some time.
Receiver Taylor Gabriel, who was bunched to the right, jogged across the field, selling the play fake, before speeding up.
“A little sneak play,” Nagy said, “when he sneaks down the sideline.”
Broncos safety Justin Simmons figured out what was happening, albeit a bit late. He took a deep angle toward Gabriel down the left sideline, trying to prevent the deep ball. Trubisky tried to throw one anyway, and sailed it over Gabriel’s head with the safety closing in on him.
“Their guy, he noticed it and he went to run high to take it away,” Nagy said. “Now you adjust. They played good defense. They see it. But you can still make that happen.”
A line-drive throw wouldn’t have gotten the Bears the 58-yard score they were hoping for, but, rather, a 17-yard gain. Nagy would have happily taken that.
“That angle of where Taylor was and where Mitch was wasn’t the greatest of angles,” Nagy said. “I think Mitch would tell you, “Listen if I had that over again, it would be more of a line-drive shot and kind of a back shoulder [throw].’
“Instead of a touchdown throw for 60 because they took it away, it would be a gain of 17.”
That 17-yard catch would have qualified as the team’s fifth-longest play of the game. The Bears would have had some momentum on first down — and another first down.
“We had a few of those against the Packers,” he said. “We had a couple in the second half [Sunday] and then what did we have? We had penalties that pulled us back. So you lose all that rhythm.
“We got to get away from that. We gotta make that completion, make those plays and then it’ll help get the ball rolling more.”
