Mitchell Trubisky has taken a major step back in his third season, and at least one NFL coach seems to think Bears head coach Matt Nagy deserves most of the blame for that.
Rich Eisen said on “The Rich Eisen Show” this week that he spoke with a trustworthy NFL coach who has a Super Bowl ring and asked him what the problem is with Trubisky in Chicago. The coach, who chose to remain anonymous, essentially said Nagy called so many gimmick plays last season that Trubisky never learned how to play basic NFL football.
“The coach used all of these gimmicks last year and the rest of the league has sniffed it out, and Trubisky does not know how to do the basics because it was so gimmicky last year,” Eisen said the coach told him. “When it comes to going through regular reads and progressions like base football, he can’t do it and isn’t ready to do it. The Bears need to be far more simplistic, pull it back, go basic and start from scratch.”
The problem with that argument is that a first-round quarterback should already know the basics of reads and progressions. If the Bears drafted a guy who doesn’t, they certainly deserve blame for that. But it’s also possible that Nagy had to use so many trick plays last season just to make Trubisky look good, and teams finally caught up to it. Maybe Trubisky just can’t get it done without a gimmick offense because he simply isn’t good enough.
As the head coach and someone who comes from an offensive background, Nagy is obviously largely responsible for how horrendous the Bears have been on that side of the ball this year. However, it’s difficult for an NFL coach to make something out of nothing. That could be what Nagy was able to do last season before teams caught on.
Trubisky gave us a glimpse this week of just how motivated he is to block out the criticism, but he has five touchdown passes and three interceptions in seven games. He’s less than a game manager at this point, and Chicago’s potential is being wasted because of it.
