Chicago has a history of failure at quarterback, and much of that is driven by the team failing its quarterbacks first. One player who seems to embody this problem the most is Mitchell Trubisky.
The 2017 Bears were, in all honesty, a disaster on the offense. Chicago’s “leading” receiver was Kendall Wright in his last season before he washed out of the league, and he’d averaged under 650 yards a season before his sole year in Chicago. The next-best guy was Josh Bellamy–who had more than 20 catches
and 300 yards for the only time in his career. Dontelle Inman was in the same tier, and neither Zach Miller nor Adam Shaheen offered meaningful pass-catching help at the tight end position. Note that each of these is not a player who played badly because Trubisky was the quarterback, but rather players who clearly were inadequate receiving threats on any team, and they were the players whom Trubisky was supposed to develop with.
The only other offensive weapons of note were gadget Tarik Cohen and Jordan Howard. Cohen was a fun player at his best, and one whose personal story is worth empathy, but he was never more than a variety addition to the game. And Howard was a volume workhorse back who was still feeling the after effects of a rookie campaign such that his success rate and yards per carry dropped notably.
Protecting Trubisky while he tried to get the ball to these players? Charles Leno, Josh Sitton in his last year as a starter in the league (while he was definitely cooked), Cody Whitehair, Kyle Long, and Bobby Massie. Leno was an underappreciated journeyman, but that’s all he was. Kyle Long was elite when healthy, but he was only healthy enough to play in 9 games in 2017 and he was not his old self in those games. Massie and Whitehair? In the same tier.In other words, Trubisky had a mix of adequate but unexceptional help up front.
His offensive coordinator? Dowell Loggains, who only had a Top 20 offense in the league once, and never in the three years he was employed after 2017.
From the beginning, Trubisky never had a chance.
Despite this start to his career, Trubisky did improve. In 2018, he had a passer rating and adjusted net yards per attempt above the league average. Additionally, after faltering in 2019, during his final year in Chicago (2020), he had an above-average passer rating again and was only barely below the league average in ANY/A. Despite a revolving door of coordinators and consistently poor support, the man from Mentor, Ohio showed the capacity to improve and he demonstrated at least a basic capacity to be average even when his head coach—Matt Nagy—was a man who as an offensive coordinator somehow had Patrick Mahomes looking pedestrian (15th and 21st in offensive rankings over the last two seasons).
However, his fifth year in the league coincided with Ryan Pace’s desperate attempt to save his own job. Trubisky was therefore jettisoned to clear the way for a new quarterback–who, if he had shown the same potential as Trubisky had in Chicago, might have reset the clock and allowed Pace to stay as general manager.
It wasn’t to be, and Trubisky’s career as a starter ended the same way it began, as a casualty of Ryan Pace’s decision-making.
Which Bears player do you think never had a fair chance?
