Entering the new 2019 NFL season, plenty of teams had the hype train behind them but some of that looks unwarranted after Week 1.
Over the past few months, NFL teams have been working through the draft, free agency and everything else that goes into the offseason to improve their respective teams. Now that Week 1 of the 2019 NFL season has come and gone, all 32 teams had the chance to show off their improvements.
In the case of some teams, though, the offseason hype leading up to Week 1 far exceeded the product that was put on the field. To be fair, some of these teams may be working out the kinks with their new pieces in the first week of the regular season.
At the same time, however, there’s the chance that the preseason hype was just way too large for some of these teams. Put simply, after what we saw in Week 1 of the 2019 campaign, these NFL teams look like they may have been overhyped.
5. Chicago Bears
After the Chicago Bears big turnaround from 2017 to 2018 that saw them win 12 games, the offense remained somewhat of a concern entering this season. The offense was serviceable last year, though, and many speculated that Mitchell Trubisky would be able to take a step forward under head coach Matt Nagy for the second year.
Trubisky got his first test of the 2019 season in the NFL Kickoff game on Thursday night and, facing the Green Bay Packers revamped defense, the Bears quarterback failed. He finished the game completing just 57 percent of his passes with no touchdowns and one interception. And as bad as that may look, the stats don’t tell the entire story of how poorly the quarterback played.
Despite just tossing one pick on the night, Trubisky had numerous other throws that could’ve been taken away by the Packers defense. It was an exceptionally bad showing from the signal-caller in Chicago.
If the Bears want any shot at winning the NFC North, they need Trubisky to be far better than he was against Green Bay — or at least not offer opposing teams the opportunity to create turnovers so frequently.