More Consistency a High Priority for Mitchell Trubisky
It almost sounded like Bears coach Matt Nagy was day dreaming a bit.
Nagy was talking Wednesday about the comeback against Detroit, and quarterback Mitchell Trubisky.
"I don't want to give all the credit to Mitchell because there were some pretty good routes, there were some pretty good protections and there were some pretty catches as well, but what happens is is that when you fight through and you battle through like that, you feel that momentum and it catches fire and it ignites the defense," Nagy said. "And then it goes back and forth.
"And so, boy, if (Trubisky) could do that for four (quarters), to throw three touchdowns and be 8-for-10 and have that rating he had, you know, you don't need all that the whole game but if you could get some of that, that would be pretty good."
There's the problem, though.
Trubisky goes into Sunday's game at home against the New York Giants still looking like the inconsistent player he was last year to a large extent.
The difference Sunday was he finished after three poor quarters for the win. His passer rating had been 65.06 after three quarters on 12 of 26 for 153 yards. Then he goes 8-for-9 for 89 yards and three touchdowns to finish. That's a fourth-quarter passer rating of 143.3 facing mostly man-to-man defense after the Lions used zone much of the game's earlier portion.
"The thing for him to have played as well as he did in that fourth quarter, that's special now," Nagy said. "He played at another level in that fourth quarter. Man if we could get four quarters of that you can see what could happen."
It's a simple one-word description: consistency.
"When you evaluate the quarterback position, inconsistencies can get you, right? And that's what can get frustrating if you're inconsistent," Nagy said. "So you can't be consistently inconsistent. You have to be consistent all the time. That separates the good from the great ones. And we are trying to get to that point."
Trubisky hopes the rest of the team took note of how well they did as an offense in the fourth quarter.
"Hopefully guys see that and continue to buy in so we're able to make more plays early on in the game," Trubisky said. "But most of it comes down to me and just overall execution with the guys on third down."
The 2-for-11 effort on third downs was the most negative aspect of the win, beyond being down 23-6.
The solution to Trubisky is simple yet not necessarily easy to achieve.
"For me, continue to make good decisions, cut out a few bad decisions," Trubisky said. "And just find completions. Don't try to force stuff early on. Take what the defense is giving me. And continue to go through progressions and make good decisions by finding completions. That's keeping it simple."
A big difference was achieved overall by lining him up under center so often. Last year it was virtually always the shotgun and Nagy said they determined from self-scouting that a higher percentage of big plays arose when Trubisky went under center.
"When we were selling the run just like pass, when we didn't give a defensive tell and a lot of times we were in shotgun and teams would favor the pass more and that when they know pass is coming, it just makes it a lot harder to find completions and get explosive plays because they're just going to sag off, play soft zone and keep everything in front," Trubisky said.
This wasn't natural for Trubisky, and the footwork had to be learned through repetitions.
"That was the most I've probably been under center in my whole career," Trubisky said. "I mean I was all shotgun in middle school through high school and then college. And then learned a bunch of under center when I got to the NFL."
So it helped Trubisky at game's end when the Bears were still sticking to the run and using play-action passes or plays starting from under center.
However, the execution of the passing game itself still must be accomplished better overall by Trubisky.
"For me, continue to make good decisions, cut out a few bad decisions," Trubisky said. "And just find completions. Don't try to force stuff early on. Take what the defense is giving me.
"And continue to go through progressions and make good decisions by finding completions. That's keeping it simple."
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