'Laser-Focused' Mitchell Trubisky an Angry Young QB
So what has all the condemnation from website gurus and internet game film boys done to Mitchell Trubisky as he prepares to face the Los Angeles Chargers?
Apparently he's become an angry young man.
It goes beyond a terse, almost surly attitude in Wednesday's press conference. And it's not necessarily a problem, according to Bears tackle Bobby Massie.
"Mitch is locked in right now," Massie said Thursday, after seeing Trubisky in Wednesday's practice. "He's laser-focused. He's steering the ship.
"Yesterday he was flying around, getting guys where they need to be, slinging the ball, getting it out fast. He was doing a good job."
Trubisky claimed on Wednesday to be wearing the earmuffs and horse blinders that coach Matt Nagy wants all the Bears to use, but his attitude seemed to suggest some of the negativity seeped through to him.
Yet, when the media ran to Nagy to tell him his quarterback was being edgy, the Bears coach didn't seem to mind.
"For me, it's not just Mitch, it's everybody that has a little edge to them right now because they care," Nagy said. "So I kind of like hearing that that he was like that. I'm OK with that.
"There comes a point and time when you care and you have an edge and you get a little angry – that’s kind of good. I feel like a lot of us are good people that most times have smiles on our faces and we're having fun and that's what we're known to do but then you also know too that this is where we are at and if people want to have certain thoughts or opinions or suggestions, that's OK, understand that, but let’s handle what we can handle."
Good quarterbacks throughout history usually seemed the picture of calm efficiency: Joe Montana, Roger Staubach, Bart Starr, Tom Brady for instance.
Can anger fit in with a quarterback's play?
Nagy believes so.
"When you start talking about being angry, and now I'm transferring this to the field, you can play angry at the quarterback position but there is a way to do it," Nagy said. "There is the reckless where you are out-of-control angry or there is the ruthless, where it's clean.
"I'll take the ruthless angry from our whole team right now. I don't want reckless angry."
Nagy said he wasn't always the amiable sort he is now when he played quarterback. Sometimes he was the angry young man, too.
"I did a little bit of both when I played," Nagy said. "There are times when you play angry. But you got to make the right decisions. If you start playing angry and you're not making the right decisions, then that's the reckless angry. And we don't want that. So, you can't just play angry. You got to play angry and have fun, too."
Trubisky's anger isn't the issue as much as his passing ability.
Nagy was asked whether he still thought Trubisky could be the pocket passer who could run his offense.
"For sure. For sure," Nagy said. "He's learning. This is a learning process. You've seen the glimpses.
"I take you back, for instance, to the Tampa Bay game last year. And there's a couple others, too. You go to Detroit last year, where you see him make plays throughout the year. There's plays that he makes and so when you see those plays and you see him going through the highs of this offense, you understand it's there. Now we need to get more of that consistently, if that's answering your question. So we need less of the gray and more of the highs, and that's going to happen and that happens in time."
At 3-3, with the clock ticking on future contract talks for Trubisky, time doesn't seem like a commodity the Bears own.
"The difference is that the time is the issue right now," Nagy said. "That’s where we're all at. Time is of the essence.
"That's the whole balance of the patience, the instant gratification. But in all, we want that arrow, the steady incremental improvement, to be going up right now. That's what our goal is to do with him."
And keep him angry, because it seems to help according to Massie.
Twitter@BearsOnMaven
