How Andy Dalton-Mitchell Trubisky Battle Would Look
The Andy Dalton rumors keep on popping up and the latest one says the Bears have been given permission to talk with his reps about a trade with the possibility of a contract extension/restructuring.
Dalton has been the name most commonly associated with credible reports about Bears quarterback interests all offseason, and if it's the route they're going it will be a journey into the great unknown.
Would Dalton be able to beat out Mitchell Trubisky for the starting quarterback job? It's not difficult to look at this acquisition as the Bears acquiring a different type of mediocre quarterback.
To some extent the Bears couldn't know what to expect from Dalton, as too many circumstances enter into the equation to predict accurately how it would all play out.
Dalton is a great unknown to many Bears fans who hadn't paid much attention to the AFC North since 2015.
The Bengals have been bad since 2015, and last won a playoff game 30 years ago. So there hasn't been a reason to pay attention to them.
Prior to 2016, Dalton's career was an the elevator up and it dropped rapidly in the year new Bears offensive coordinator Bill Lazor took over as Bengals quarterbacks coach. Last year after Lazor left, it came to a crashing halt.
Lazor took over as QB coach in 2016. Dalton's passer rating dropped from 106.2 in 2015 to 91.8, his yards per attempt fell from an outstanding 8.4 to a solid 7.5 and he hit a career low with 18 touchdown passes. In the next two seasons Lazor became offensive coordinator and Dalton's passer rating dropped by 5.2 to 86.6 and then rose by 3.0 in 2018. His yards per attempt fell another 0.8 per attempt in 2017 and rose to 7.0 in 2018.
With Lazor gone in 2019 and a new Bengals head coach in Zac Taylor, Dalton matched a career low in yards per attempt at 6.6 and in quarterback rating at 78.3 as the Bengals were 2-11.
As for Dalton's playing style and strengths and weaknesses, he's sort of the anti-Trubisky.
Dalton has been more willing to throw downfield, is better at completing passes downfield for more yards than Trubisky, and at the same time he's also thrown interceptions at a higher rate.
Trubisky has been more efficient, reduced his interception rate to 1.9% last year and Dalton's remains relatively high at 2.7% for his career. Trubisky's completion percentage is better, as well, 63.4 to 62.0.
Dalton also has been able to get the ball to receivers for more yards after the catch, and last year had almost 250 more yards than Trubisky had at this even though he played in only 13 games to Trubisky's 15.
Dalton has led plenty more fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives, 20 comebacks and 24 game-winning drives. And even through three seasons his numbers were better at this than Trubisky's. Trurbisky has four comebacks and six game-winning drives and through three seasons Dalton had 10 game-winning drives and six comebacks.
Of course Trubisky is far better at eluding the rush and scrambling for yardage. In his worst season running it (2019), he was still better at this than Dalton has been during any season in his career. in fact, Dalton last reached 100 yards rushing in 2016.
Let's be clear what the Bears would ebe getting here.
They'll be bringing in a quarterback who after decent early success hasn't been part of a winning team since 2015 and has never won a playoff game. He's also better at downfield yardage than their own starter, who still is trying to develop.
It has all the makings of a good battle if it occurs, and Trubisky is going to need to become better at areas where Dalton has an edge if he would expect to come out on top.
The same could be said for Dalton, too, because turning the ball over at a rate like Dalton has with Cincinnati is more likely to lead to a benching while playing for a coach with a great dislike for it like Matt Nagy.
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