Chicago Bears: 5 Players critical to defeating Saints in Wild Card Round

Chicago Bears key player No. 1: Mitchell Trubisky, QB

Trubisky showed some improvement when he came off the bench to regain his starting job in Week 12. Going into last week’s game, the offense under his direction scored 30 or more points in four consecutive games. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that he enjoyed this success against some of the weakest defenses in the league.

When he went up against a better defense, Trubisky again struggled. You may wonder how I could say that when he went 33-of-42 for 252 yards in the game. Well, he only had 84 yards in the first half and of his total passing yards, 81 of them came on the first drive in the third quarter. A drive, by the way, that ended up in a field goal.

Trubisky dinked and dunked his way through the game. He completed just two passes for over 20 yards. One was on that first drive in the third quarter, a 53-yard bomb to Mooney. The other was a 23-yard completion to Robinson on the final drive that didn’t result in any points because time ran out.

Additionally, Trubisky again threw an interception that sealed the game for Green Bay. In the first matchup against the Packers, he committed three turnovers (two interceptions and a lost fumble). The next week against the Detroit Lions, he lost a fumble that led to the Lions’ game-winning touchdown. Against the Vikings, he threw an interception in the end zone late in the game in a 30-27 game. Even though the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars was a blowout, it was close in the first half when he threw an interception in the end zone.

It is critical for Trubisky to protect the football. He cannot continue to throw into double or triple coverage and he needs to learn to throw the ball away and not try to force things. This is something that has haunted his career in Chicago.

He also needs to complete some passes deep. If he doesn’t at least keep the Saints defense honest by completing something deep, he’ll need to continue the dinks and dunks and the offense will face another multitude of fourth downs. The Bears had five fourth downs last week. They completed four of them but missed out on the final and most important one. A team can’t continually try to convert more than a handful of fourth downs and expect to win.

Trubisky is another player who may play his final game in Chicago. If he has any expectations to come back to Chicago he needs to come up big this week. Some (like me) may speculate that his time may be over no matter what, but we don’t know what goes through the mind of ownership.