Last month, I looked at how something Matt Nagy said at the NFL Combine could lead to Mitch Trubisky being replaced as the Bears’ starting quarterback early in the 2020 season. Here’s the key quote:
“We got to figure out what our identity is, and that's going to be an objective for us,” Nagy said. “And then last year you heard me say, sometimes it takes five or six weeks. I feel like, personally, that's always the case, but there's a sense of urgency for us going into this year. It needs to happen sooner.”
Let’s revise this now that we know Nick Foles is going to be the guy to, at the bare minimum, push Trubisky. That sense of urgency will be pushed into training camp.
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RELATED: Why did the Bears choose Foles over other QB options?
Remember last year’s camp, when Trubisky’s poor results in Bourbonnais were written off (at least in press conferences) as Nagy and then-quarterback coach Dave Ragone being willing to “test” how much Trubisky could do in the offense?
While we’re re-visiting old Nagy quotes, here’s what he said in early August about Trubisky’s suboptimal practice results:
“We have big picture,” Nagy said. “There's going to be some balls in here, there's interceptions. I said it last year. We don't get frustrated over that. We're testing some things out. That's your guys' (the media’s) job to be critical of him and me. We know how to balance that. We know what's real and what's not real.”
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It’s not like Nagy wasn’t urgently trying to find a way to make the Bears’ offense work in July and August. But he never had the realistic option of benching Trubisky after so many failed “tests.” Chase Daniel was not on the team to start over a healthy Trubisky. So, Trubisky kept his job, even as he didn’t pass those tests in practice.
This year’s training camp should be different (and not just because it’ll happen in the comparatively serene setting of Halas Hall). What if Trubisky keeps throwing incompletions and interceptions as the Bears “test” what he can do?
Instead of carrying on with him as their starting quarterback, Nagy can turn to Foles, provided he’s not making the same mistakes while practicing with the first-team offense. And that might mean that Nagy’s sense of “urgency” leads to Foles de-throning Trubisky long before Week 1.
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