Mitch Trubisky must be a driven young man right at this moment. Despite being a #2 overall pick and winning the same number of games (four) in 12 tries as Jay Cutler, Brian Hoyer, Matt Barkley, and Mike Glennon could in 20 he still isn’t getting much respect. There are reasons for this. He still carries the stigma of being too inexperienced from his days at North Carolina. His stats as a rookie were barely average and he plays for an organization notorious for flubbing the QB position.
GM Ryan Pace knew this going into 2018. So he made it his personal mission to change the status quo. That meant investing the bulk of resources this offseason towards building around the young quarterback. It started with the hiring of Matt Nagy as head coach. Then it moved to free agency where Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel, and Trey Burton were added to the receiving corps.
Last but not least, the draft saw James Daniels join the offensive line while Anthony Miller and Javon Wims brought even more playmaking potential to the receiving room. Suddenly there is confidence around the league in the Bears offense, but not a lot of it is directed at Trubisky himself. Many remain skeptical. Is that fair?
Former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky doesn’t think so.
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Mitch Trubisky finally has the tools to help his natural gifts shine
Orlovsky has become one of the more respected quarterback analysts in the national media. He digs deeply into the tape to determine whether players are truly bad or good, not letting rampant opinions from the uninformed drive his narrative. When appearing on ‘Good Morning Football’ for NFL Network, he reminded people of how good a passer Trubisky is and can become.
The problem is people tend to use just one statistic for identifying accuracy from a quarterback. This can be dangerous and seriously lacking context. Trubisky completed 59.4% of his passes in 2017. Last year the league average was around 62%. So not the best. Except other factors weren’t taken into consideration, such as dropped passes and intentional throwaways. When removing those from the equation, Trubisky actually completed 65.3% of his passes.
There’s also the fact that he connected on 36.7% of his deep passes, ranking him 11th among starting quarterbacks in the NFL. Few things better demonstrate natural accuracy than hitting on passes 30-40 yards down the field. Trubisky proved he could deliver strikes last season. The one thing missing was having guys on the field who could actually get open and catch them.
As stated above, it appears that main obstacle has been cleared.
