Personnel moves are not going to tell the story of the 2019 Bears. They could improve their roster this off-season, be a better team than they were in 2018 and STILL win fewer than twelve games. No, with lofty expectations for the coming year, everything will depend upon the improved play of their starting quarterback, Mitch Trubisky.
Here’s what Matt Nagy had to say about Trubisky’s progression into 2019 at the year-end press conference [Cut to 16:30]:
According to Nagy, his young QB has already conquered the “next play mentality” and “the steps of 101 progressions.” In layman’s terms, Trubisky knows what he is doing when it comes to running the offense. But it’s understanding what the opposing defense is up to that comes next, or as Nagy puts it, “recognizing pre-snap what he’s about to see from these defenses.” At quarterback, if you know what your 11 are doing, and you know what their 11 are doing, it just comes down to making the plays.
And Trubisky can make ALL the plays.
Look no further than those final drives against the Eagles. Season on the line. Avoiding the rush. Hitting targets deep down the field with pin-point accuracy. Every completion was met with elation from the crowd. Everyone in that building felt something was changing because something was changing.
And then Parkey happened.
That feeling Trubisky gave the Soldier Field faithful in January needs to permeate the streets of Chicago throughout this next campaign. The Bears can’t be consistently successful for the next decade if the expectation is Trubisky will have his good days and his bad days. Sure, he can have a bad day every now and then – less nows, more thens – but the consistently good teams rely on their quarterback every week. They don’t hold their breath and hope.
Now it’s on Nagy. And it’s on Trubisky. Because the expectation, the fair expectation, for 2019, should be the finest season ever played by a quarterback in a Chicago Bears uniform by a significant margin.
Getting Trubisky to that point is more important than anything they can do with the other 52 roster spots.
