Chicago Bears: 3 Early breakout candidates for 2019 season
1. Mitchell Trubisky, QB
There are few NFL players that are quite as divisive among fans than Chicago Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. With the way that he came into the league and in the quarterback class he’s a part of, it’s not hard to see why. Not only did general manager Ryan Pace trade up one spot to the second pick in the 2017 NFL Draft to take Trubisky, but he chose the North Carolina product over both Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.
To this point, both Watson and Mahomes — the latter winning MVP last season — have outperformed Trubisky on the field. While Trubisky has been saddled with the tag of being an average game-manager that has not yet proven he can be a big-time playmaker, his draft peers have shown that in droves. Thus, the firestorm of criticsm makes sense.
While that may be true, Trubisky made big strides in his first year under Nagy. In 12 games started under Fox, Trubisky completed just 59.4 percent of his passes with seven touchdowns and seven interceptions along with just 182.8 yards per game. Meanwhile, Trubisky’s 14 games started in 2018 under Nagy saw him complete 66.6 percent of his throws with 24 touchdowns and 12 interceptions along with 230.2 yards per game.
Not only is that improvement under a new head coach extremely promising for the rising third-year quarterback, but year 2 under Nagy could be huge for Trubisky. It’s long been said that quarterbacks need a year to fully adapt to a new system, especially one with the nuance and forward-thinking design that the Bears head coach brings to the table. With that year under his belt, this theory would lead to the notion that Trubisky could take another step forward.
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Of course, there is the chance that Trubisky just isn’t a superstar quarterback and none of this matters. Maybe the 2018 version of the quarterback that we saw is just about as good as he’s going to be. For my money, though, the writing is on the wall for Trubisky to start proving doubters wrong in the 2019 season and really break out.