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Red Zone Issues Continue to Dog Bears, Mitchell Trubisky

Bears struggle with big mistakes on offense in goal-line scrimmage during Day 3 of padded training camp practices

It was only one series of plays in training camp but gave a glimpse of how well the Bears have solved some of their great problems of the 2019 season.

It didn't quite go as well as they'd have liked.

The red zone was a disaster area for the Bears last year as they finished 24th in touchdown percentage, Mitchell Trubisky led the NFL in red zone interceptions, and David Montgomery struggled to 14 rushes from inside the 5 for only 11 total yards.

Coach Matt Nagy put the Bears down on the goal line for full-contact scrimmage and at least on Thursday it appeared not much has changed.

Defensive lineman Bilal Nichols snuffed out one rushing attempt with a big hit behind the line of scrimmage, and then Trubisky committed a terrible snafu, the type of which Nagy had said could not be tolerated.

Trubisky stepped out of bounds for a first-and-goal sack of 3 yards on a play starting at the 1-yard line, when he easily could have thrown the ball away out of the back of the end zone and kept his team on the verge of a touchdown.

"When you are on a scramble you have to throw the ball away," Nagy said. "He knows that. We told him that. Those are critical errors that we can't have. He's not going to do that again. He's going to fix it and move on."

Nagy described it as a teachable moment, but make no mistake. In the description of this quarterback battle between Trubisky and Nick Foles, Nagy had said situational football and decision making would be big in his eyes. And he admitted as much again on Thursday.

So Trubisky committed a really poor blunder, the kind you wouldn't expect to see Foles ever make.

As for the running game, it's still early. 

The Bears really hadn't done much running in contact situations until Thursday's practice, so goal-line running in tight quarters might be a little too extreme until they get further along in practices.

"I would say, for us, right now, just because, again, we're at a point where schematically, whether it’s stuff we've done in the past or whether it's some new schemes, still kind of at the beginning stages of this," Nagy said. "We’re getting closer and closer.

"But when we go live, we'll be able to have a little bit more to say. Today we did some goal line and there was live in there, and I thought the defense, you know, they had a pretty good day on really first, second and third group. But slowly work into the live and then we can evaluate where that's at."

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