Mitch Trubisky says win over Lions was a confidence-builder

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The Chicago Bears offense needed a confidence-builder in the worst way, which is why the Detroit Lions appeared like the perfect opponent on Sunday to jumpstart an otherwise stalled Matt Nagy offense and a struggling Mitch Trubisky.

Mission accomplished, kind of.

Trubisky had his best performance of 2019, even if it still fell short of what's expected from a second overall pick and the guy who was (ready for it?) drafted ahead of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. He finished the game 16-of-23 for 173 yards and three touchdowns and a passer rating of 131.0. The Bears won, 20-13, and as our JJ Stankevitz pointed out, it was Trubisky's highest passer rating in a year.

"I think winning always does," Trubisky said from Halas Hall about the victory serving as a confidence boost. "I think playing well, playing a little bit better and kind of fixing those mistakes that we've been making, just finding ways to get in the end zone on offense and then coming up with a W is always big. It feels good. We've just got to build off of it and keep getting better."

Trubisky certainly has to build off Sunday's game and continue his improvement, especially with winds of change brewing in the quarterback market across the NFL. Players like Cam Newton, for example, could be looking for a new home this offseason and Trubisky has to stack games like Week 10 together in order to silence the calls for a potential replacement under center in Chicago.

Trubisky's maintained a professional attitude throughout his struggles, and after a performance against the Lions in which he could have taken a moment to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done, he continued to make the journey more about his teammates and the locker room.

"It just feels good to win," Trubisky said. "Just really proud of my teammates, and all this week. When you go through tough things, I think you've just got to remember why you play this game. You just love to play this game and you love the guys you play with. That'll get you through anything, and just continue to stick together, feed off your teammates, and believe that you're going to have a breakthrough, and whether you describe today as a breakthrough or not, we got the win. That's what's most important, and we've just got to continue to find ways to get better, keep building. But it felt good to have that hard work pay off a little bit."

There's no denying Trubisky has the character to be a franchise quarterback. Off the field, he's everything the Bears could've ever hoped for. He answers all the tough questions, doesn't hide from adversity and rarely, if ever, loses his composure with the media. Those are tough boxes to check, and he's checked them all.

But the NFL isn't a nice-guy league. It's a prove-it league, and on Sunday, Trubisky took a step — albeit a small one — toward proving he might just belong after all.

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