USA Today
Mitchell Trubisky Still QB Starter, Assuming Good Health
Matt Nagy still considers Mitchell Trubisky his quarterback, whenever and if he gets healthy enough to play.
"Absolutely, absolutely," Nagy said Monday when asked if a healthy Trubisky would still be starter.
Trubisky suffered a right hip-pointer in the first half of Sunday night's 17-7 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, and left late in the game due to stiffness.
The injury occurred on a sack by Michael Brocker, but at the time Trubisky wanted to play on and said he felt well enough.
"What ended up happening over time with him is it became stiff, tighter and tighter, and that's where we ended up keeping an eye on it and noticing that," Nagy said. "We wanted to be careful about it affecting his play."
It did affect Trubisky's play, Nagy and Trubisky both said.
"I couldn't move around or buy time," Trubisky said. "I was just throwing with all arm. It affected my accuracy a little bit."
Nagy watched video of the third quarter Monday morning and said it was apparent after a running play rather than a pass that Trubisky was hurting. Trubisky was supposed to stand up and then bend down and hand off on a draw to Tarik Cohen, which went for 12 yards.
"He couldn't even do that," Nagy said. "So just the movement of his hips, everything (thrown) was a lot of arm. There wasn't much stepping into throws."
Although Trubisky was said to be affected, he had a better passer rating in the second half. He went 12 of 19 for 89 yards with a touchdown for a 91.8 passer rating. In the first half, when healthier, he was 12 of 24 for 101 yards.
Although Trubisky mentioned the injury to team medical personnel, he didn't go into the medical tent in the second quarter after the sack. Instead, Trubisky mentioned it to quarterbacks coach Dave Ragnone. Then a full series and half of another went by before Trubisky left it became fully aware of it.
"Even before they scored the touchdown to go up 10 (17-7), we had already made the decision that we were going to go with Chase (Daniel)," Nagy said.
This timeline seemed flawed because no one could remember seeing Daniel warming up on the sideline, which seemed a good thing to do considering the starter was supposedly coming out.
"He was down there throwing and taking snaps from Cody (Whitehair)," Nagy said. "He was warming up and throwing."
The communication between the people on the bench was apparently better than the communication between the sideline and media in the press box, because there had been no injury report on Trubisky prior to his going to the bench."
"All's I'm telling you is exactly what happened," Nagy saidl. "And I really can't be more honest than that. We knew that he had a pain, there was pain, we had to monitor that the whole second half and that's what we did."
As a result, Nagy said there is no communication problem within the staff with players over injuries.
As for Trubisky, Nagy said he fought leaving the game when the two had a long heart-to-heart which NBC cameras caught. Nagy said because they didn't know the truth, the TV coverage team from NBC must have misinterpreted what was going on because it was said Trubisky was being benched without an injury.
"The thing that you love about Mitch is that he's extremely tough," Nagy said. "I love that about him. But at the same time, he's at a point where you could see that it was painful.
"So what I had to do was I wanted him to know coming from me that he needs to be brutally honest with me in regards to his pain and where he's at. And that's exactly what it was. I sat there and I told him, I said, 'Listen, man. We appreciate your toughness. We appreciate you being as tough as you can possibly be and want to stay in the game. But I need to be able to make a decision because there's a fine line of that pain or being injured to where it affects how you play or decisions that you make because of being injured.' "
While Nagy was supporting Trubisky, he also had to stand his own ground on continuing as the play caller for the offense. He said he never thought about giving up the play calling to someone else.
"I have zero ego and I have zero care of giving play-call duties to somebody else," Nagy said. "I really do not care about that, .and if that's what we feel like from going through it that that's what we need to do, then I would do that. I really would.
"But when you go through the tape and you look at things and you know schematically where we're at and what we're calling and when we're calling it, there's without a doubt a few plays in that game that I would go back and say, ‘You know what, that's our fault. We didn’t scheme it right.’ And that starts with me. And I need to be able to accept that and know how do I fix that."
The Bears have one other injury to keep an eye on going forward as right tackle Bobby Massie had to leave with lower back pain. Cornelius Lucas came in for Massie to finish.
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