2020 Chicago Bears Preview: Quarterback

By Kevin Schroeder
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Updated: September 10, 2020

(Photo credit: Kamil Krzaczynski, USA Today Sports)

Last year, the Bears entered the season hopeful that their #2 overall draft pick QB would build upon a Pro Bowl season and silence his doubters. Well, that didn’t happen, so in the off-season, they traded a 4th-round draft pick to Jacksonville for Nick Foles. Since there’s no fans at training camp and no pre-season games this year, all we have to go on is what the beat writers tell us. Thus, this post takes on somewhat of a “choose your own adventure” spin.

Mitchell Trubisky is the starting quarterback unless Nick Foles is. Drafted 2^nd overall in 2017 (yes, the same draft that featured Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, let’s get that out of the way now), Trubisky saw his rookie year kneecapped by John Fox and Dowell Loggains. The former Tar Heel began the season as Mike Glennon’s backup before being promoted to the starting role in week 5 after Glennon threw up all over himself against the Packers. And stunk against the Steelers. And bombed against the Bucs. Upon being promoted to the starting role, Trubisky was largely meh. The team went 4-8 with him at the helm and he threw for under 200 yards per game. He finished the season with 7 touchdowns, never throwing more than one in a game, and 7 interceptions, but three of those did come in one game in Detroit and two more in a blowout loss in Philadelphia. While his season as a whole was far from a rookie of the year effort or anything like that, Trubisky did show flashes of the talent that Ryan Pace believed he had.

Trubisky showed more than flashes in 2018 under new coach Matt Nagy. Amazing what happens when the offensive system isn’t just a pile of nonsense. Trubisky posted an 11-3 record as a starter, missing two games due to a shoulder injury caused by a cheap hit by Harrison Smith. Trubisky threw for over 3200 yards with a 95.4 passer rating, 24 TDs and 12 INTs. That was good enough to earn the Bears a trip to the playoffs as the NFC North Champion and Trubisky a trip to the Pro Bowl as an alternate.

Given the way the Bears lost in the 2018 playoffs, with Trubisky leading what should’ve been a game-winning drive, it was easy to see why optimism was high heading into 2019. Unfortunately, Trubisky not only didn’t take a step forward, he took one back. Did his second shoulder injury against the Vikings in as many years have something to do with that? Possibly. If his only problems last year were related to the physical throwing of the football, then there may be something to that. But it wasn’t. Trubisky looked lost at times, didn’t seem to know where he’s supposed to go with the ball or really even how to handle the offense, and made some mistakes that would have been considered sloppy as a rookie and flat-out inexcusable in year three. His interception percentage dropped almost a full point from 2.8 to 1.9, but his touchdown percentage fell from 5.5 to 3.3.

In the off-season, the Bears brought in Bill Lazor and John DeFilippo as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, respectively. Both guys have done great things with Nick Foles as QB coach: under Lazor in 2013, Foles had a Pro Bowl season where he threw 27 TDs to only 2 INTs, under DeFilippo, he won a Super Bowl. Unfortunately, both guys also have less-than-ideal histories as offensive coordinators. How much of that is their fault? Uhh…probably some, but hopefully not too much.

Lazor left Philadelphia after that aforementioned great season from Foles and took over as OC in Miami. In Lazor’s first year, the Dolphins improved from 18^th in offensive DVOA to 8^th. They fell to 22^nd the following year and Lazor was fired. The Dolphins’ head coach at the time was Joe Philbin, an offensive coach himself, so the questions is: how much control did Lazor have over the offense? While the blame for the slide in year two probably shouldn’t all fall on him, it is worth noting that when Philbin was fired during the season, tight ends coach Dan Campbell was name the interim coach, which seems like it says something about something. In 2016, Lazor was the QB coach for a Bengals team that finished the year 11^th in offensive DVOA. After an 0-2 start, then-OC Ken Zampese was canned and Lazor took over. The Bengals finished the season 22^nd in offensive DVOA. The team improved slightly to 19^th the following season with Lazor as full-time OC, but that wasn’t good enough for him to keep the job.

John DeFilippo got his first QB coaching gig in Oakland in 2007. He would get to work with that year’s #1 overall draft pick, which sounds like the best possible way to kick off your first position coaching job in the NFL until you remember that the QB in question was JaMarcus Russell. In Russell’s lone season as the full-time starter in 2008, he didn’t totally suck. Russell threw for a little over 2,400 yards with 13 TDs and 8 INTs in 15 games. After that season, DeFilippo headed to the Jets and Russell played his last season in the league. Following a lone season in the Big Apple New Jersey and two at San Jose State, DeFilippo headed back to Oakland, where he got a quality season out of a 33-year-old Carson Palmer in 2012, then had to try to cobble something together out of Terrelle Pryor and Matts Flynn and McGloin. In 2014, he got to work with another rookie, and fortunately for DeFilippo, this one didn’t stink. Derek Carr not only didn’t stink, but put together a very nice season under DeFilippo’s tutelage. 2015 saw DeFilippo head to Cleveland for an OC gig where he would be saddled with another “million dollar talent, ten cent head” rookie, Johnny Manziel, who has since washed out of the NFL, CFL, and was working on doing likewise in the AAF when it folded. Following his headache by the lake, DeFilippo headed to Philadelphia to take the QB coaching job with the Eagles. In his second season in the city that boos Santa Claus, Carson Wentz was an MVP candidate before a knee injury ended his season. Well, the Eagles won the Super Bowl anyway as Foles stepped in and led the Eagles on a great postseason run, culminating in the now-Bears QB out-dueling Tom Brady in Super Bowl LII and earning MVP honors for doing so. After the Super Bowl win, DeFilippo was considered a candidate for the Bears’ head coaching job. The team ultimately went with Matt Nagy, which looks like a good call, as DeFilippo’s next two years saw him get fired as OC of the Vikings and then Jaguars. Don’t let that discourage you on DeFilippo’s ability to coach quarterbacks, though – he clearly has a knack there. Again, he actually kinda got something out of JaMarcus Russell. JaMarcus Russell(!). With the Bears, DeFilippo will get to focus on QB development, as Lazor is the OC, Nagy retains play-calling duties, and Dave Ragone remains on board as passing game coordinator, as he reportedly is skilled at concocting plays.

Nick Foles is the starting quarterback unless Mitchell Trubisky is. Foles began his career in 2012 in Philadelphia as Michael Vick’s backup. After taking over for an injured Vick, Foles played pretty well, but that play didn’t translate to wins and Andy Reid was fired after the season. Chip Kelly came in, Vick went down again, Foles came in again, and this time, went bonkers. I talked about his stats from that season above, but I’ll talk about them again here, because why not? 2,891 yards, 27 TDs, 2 INTs, 119.2 passer rating. Bonkers.

The following year, Foles’s production took a sharp downturn. It bears (pun kind of intended) mentioning that, as stated above, Bill Lazor left for Miami after that season. Are those things related? Dunno. But it was interesting. Foles threw only 13 TDs with 10 INTs in 8 games before a season-ending collarbone injury. After the season, he was traded to St. Louis as part of a deal that brought Sam Bradford to Philadelphia.

Foles was so bad in St. Louis that he thought about retiring. After a season that saw him benched for Case Keenum, Foles decided to give it one more shot and linked up with Andy Reid again, this time in Kansas City. Foles saw only one start as a Chief; he was just okay, but the Chiefs did win. After the season, Foles went back to Philadelphia, and we all know what happened there. Following two seasons in Philly, one special, one that should’ve ended in the wild card round if a certain jabroni kicker didn’t absolutely suck, Foles opted out of his deal and signed with Jacksonville where he would again be coached by John DeFilippo. Foles got hurt in the Jags’ first game and didn’t come back until week 11. The Jaguars were 4-5 upon Foles’s return and got blown out in consecutive division road games to Indianapolis and Tennessee. Foles wasn’t really bad in either game, but he certainly was the following week at home against the Bucs. The Jags got blown out again and from there, Gardner Minshew was the starter. Now Foles comes to Chicago, where he will be the second QB to play for the team who resembles Napoleon Dynamite. Hopefully, he’s better than the first one. It would be pretty hard not to be.

There is now a ton of QB coaching talent on staff. It is not impossible that a combination of that coaching and Trubisky healing and strengthening his shoulder leads to an improvement large enough to beat out Foles for the starting job. If he does, that’s a good thing. St. Louis disaster aside, Foles has generally been at least a solid QB. Solid QB play gets the Bears to the playoffs last year. If Trubisky’s better than that, the offensive outlook goes from “should at least be good enough to not waste this defense” to “an actual strength in its own right.”

Or Foles could be the guy he was in Philly. Probably not the first stint, but maybe the second one. That guy who led the Eagles to a Super Bowl and had a sizable chunk of the Eagles’ fan base wanting to keep him over Carson Wentz. If he’s that guy, the offensive outlook becomes similarly rosy.

Trubisky has been given the nod for week one in Detroit. Does that mean the light has come on? Maybe. Without fans at camp, all we have to go on is media reports. The word as of late from the reporters at Halas Hall was that Foles appeared to be ahead. We know what Foles is. This staff knows what Foles is; they’ve all worked with him before. He’s not going to put up eye-popping numbers, but he knows how to run this offense efficiently. If Trubisky is legitimately better than him, this team is in really good shape, not just this season, but going forward as well, because Trubisky’s getting a new contract and we don’t have to worry about the QB position next year. That’s the ceiling here. There’s also the possibility that this is the staff giving Trubisky one last shot, as once you go to Foles, it’s over for Mitch and everyone knows it. I know it, you know it, the staff knows it, and, most importantly, Mitch knows it. Even if that is the case, though, with Foles around, there’s no reason to continue to play Trubisky this year if he can’t hack it. Ryan Pace is almost certainly outta here if the team misses the playoffs this year and it’s hard to imagine that Nagy wouldn’t be shown the door as well. This space’s expectation is that Trubisky won’t get too much rope. If he struggles, Foles will be the starter in short order.

Twitter: @KSchroeder_312