The Bears were not good enough yesterday in New Orleans.

But no matter what organizational changes they are pondering – and those conversations are all fair – the club must concretely decide today not to bring Mitch Trubisky back to Chicago next season. No more running out of bounds instead of barreling ahead for the first down. No more absurd check downs with the game on the line. No more errant throws into traffic from the pocket.

The Bears need instincts at quarterback. (Look at how Lamar Jackson turned the Ravens game around with his legs.) They need guts. (Look at how Taylor Heinecke inspired Washington.)  They need a gamer. (Look at the way Josh Allen feels a game.) Trubisky has, and is, none of those things. And he never will.”

Mitch said he feels he has “unfinished business” here. He does not. His story is written in Chicago. Might Mitch find a career for himself in this league? Maybe. Blake Bortles had far more success in Jacksonville than Mitch has had in Chicago and Bortles can’t find a roster spot these days. The Mitch asset teams would find most valuable – his legs – are rendered useless by his refusal to use them productively.

The Gathering Horde: But what are your better options then for 2021, Jeff?

Jeff: Who cares?

Maybe the 20th pick starts at quarterback next season. Maybe it’s a second round pick. Maybe it’s Matthew Stafford or Matt Ryan seeing out their careers. It doesn’t really matter. Who the quarterback is for 2021 is important. Ending the Trubisky drama, the Trubisky debate, the Trubisky era, is just as important. And that should happen today.

Sunday at 3:40 CT, the Bears will play a playoff game in New Orleans. This is the third in a three-part preview of that contest.

Notes on the First Meeting

Two things were frustrating about the first meeting between the Bears and the Saints.

(1) The Bears had no answers for Jared Cook. The world knows Drew Brees is not going to try and take the top off the defense. He doesn’t have the arm strength for that anymore. So opponents can’t let the slant route go for big YAC. They must have an answer for Kamara out of the backfield. And they can’t let Cook beat them on third downs. That’s exactly what the Bears did.

(2) Every Taysom Hill run seemed to work. When Sean Payton gets into short yardage or goal line situations, he no longer hesitates to take Brees off the field and put Hill on. A lot of Hill’s success is a product of a tough, physical offensive line but it’s also simply a schematic advantage to run the football at 11-on-11. If Hill is converting every time he comes on the field, the Bears are in for a long day.

Both of these issues will be difficult to correct if Roquan Smith is unavailable, as expected.

Stop the Rush, Stop the Saints?

The Saints have won their last two games, against Carolina and Minnesota, rushing for 156 and 264 yards respectively.

The Saints lost their two games before that, against Kansas City and Philadelphia, rushing for 60 and 96 yards respectively.

Keeping the New Orleans rushing attack contained doesn’t guarantee you victory but it does guarantee you’ll keep their point total manageable.

Three Things the Bears Defense Must Do

• Catch the Ball. One looks at the score of last Sunday’s Bears/Packers game and thinks, “Well the Bears got blown out.” Except that’s simply not what took place. This was a one-score game late in the second half and the Bears dropped THREE EASY interceptions. The spectacular plays that go unmade by defenders can be excused. But when the quarterback tries to play backyard pitch-and-catch with you, you have to oblige him. When Brees gives the Bears an opportunity for a game-changing play, they have to seize it.

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Sunday at 3:40 CT, the Bears will play a playoff game in New Orleans. This is the second in a three-part preview of that contest.

Last year, it was Mitch Trubisky’s performance against the New Orleans Saints that soured many – including me – on his prospects as the future quarterback of the Chicago Bears. Now he meets them again, this time in the postseason, this time with his career potentially on the line. Will the results look any different?

Thoughts.

• Objective one for Dennis Allen’s defense is going to be limiting David Montgomery. If the Saints can keep the Bears in second/third-and-long, they’ll force Trubisky to throw the ball down the field. But their rush defense – while ranked near the top of the sport – has been a bit scattershot this season.
  • Against Philly and Jalen Hurts, they got thrashed. Miles Sanders went for 115 (8.2 per carry) and Hurts added 106 (5.9 per). The threat of a running quarterback kept them off-balance.*
  • When they had no fear of the opposing QB, against San Francisco in mid-November, they limited Kyle Shanahan’s rushing attack to 49 yards and tailback Jerick McKinnon to 1.8 yards per carry. This approach will more accurately mirror how they approach Sunday.
• *While understanding the fear of sounding like a broken record, Trubisky’s legs can be an offensive game-changer Sunday. The Bears don’t need to call designed runs for him but they need him to recognize when the yards/first downs are available. Every five-yard chunk matters. Every first down matters. And getting that first down is a better option than a risky throw into traffic every single time. Trubisky’s legs are an x-factor.
• Saints don’t have “stars” on their defensive line but they’ve got one of the more solid rotations in the league. Trey Hendrickson has been great all season but lately Carl Granderson has looked like a budding pass-rush star. They move these guys around. They change their pressures constantly. They are a lot for an offensive line to handle.

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Sunday at 3:40 CT, the Bears will play a playoff game in New Orleans. This is the first in a three-part preview of that contest.

Kickers

Cairo Santos has been the biggest surprise on the Bears roster this season and is due a contract extension. Santos hasn’t missed a field goal since September, and has missed only one extra point on the season.

Will Lutz has had a down year for the Saints, making only 82.1% of his field goals. But his numbers have been substantially better at home, where he has not missed an extra point and missed only one field goal.

If this game comes down to a big kick late, both teams will be comfortable sending their kicker out there to make it.

Punters

Pat O’Donnell has become one of the more consistent punters in the game. But if there’s a flaw in his game it’s the absence of the great punt. He is fourth in the league, leaving 28 punts inside the 20, but in a game where the Bears’ specials need to be special, PO’D needs to pin Brees deep a few times.

Thomas Morstead is having (arguably) his weakest season but the metrics used to judge punters are often yardage-based and those don’t always compute. But Morstead’s punts have been fair caught more than any in the league and returners are averaging 2.3 yards per return against his punt unit, best in the league.

Return Game

Cordarrelle Patterson is the best kickoff return man in the sport but I don’t imagine a scenario where Sean Payton gives him an opportunity to dramatically alter momentum. And the Bears simply haven’t found a replacement for Tarik Cohen on punt returns. (The playoffs are no time to experiment back there, either.) As a team they rank 10th in kickoff return average and 22nd in punt return average.

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(If you know why I chose this picture, I give you much credit.)

In the end, Mitch Trubisky was Sunday what he has been throughout his Bears career: a small player in the big moment. With a chance to change his narrative, a chance to pay off his achievements of the last month against a terrific opponent, Trubisky again failed against the Green Bay Packers. Inaccurate throws all over the field. Another nightmare toss into the end zone that somehow was not intercepted. More poor decisions from the pocket. More refusing to use his legs, this time to the dismay of color analyst Daryl Johnston.

It wasn’t about the play calling. It wasn’t about the limitations of the quarterback.

I love how the narrative changes to “the playcalling was bad.” The reality is they ran the ball 27 times and a good defense took away Mitch’s limited game plan. As we’ve been saying, at some point your QB has to make plays. Today he couldn’t.

— Patrick Sheldon (@P_Shels) January 4, 2021

But folks, this isn’t much of a story.

This was the expectation.

Forget the final score at Soldier Field. The Bears had every opportunity to make this contest with their oldest rivals an old fashioned shootout. They kept the ball. They moved the chains. Their tough-to-tackle weapons were once against tough to tackle. Even the defense did its job in the third quarter, with the help of an awful drop. There was an exciting game waiting to be played. But it required two quarterbacks. And like so many other Sundays in the modern history of Bears vs. Packers, only one showed up.

As has been stated by most of the sane folks writing about this franchise, Trubisky had done nothing recently to prove he was the long-term answer at the quarterback position. Nobody is going to pay starting quarterback money to a player that can’t be trusted to throw the football into the end zone and right now Mitch can’t be trusted to do that.

But Trubisky, with the assistance of his head coach and offensive coordinator, had done enough over the last month to show this offense could be productive with him under center. Even historically productive! Sunday he had a chance to cement himself as the front runner to be the team’s starter in September. If, as was argued in this space last week, he simply played to his mean and pitched that mid-90s quarterback rating, the Bears would have had a chance to beat the Packers late and the Trubisky improvement argument would have had some supporting data. He failed.

The Bears have a playoff game next Sunday in New Orleans. Trubisky will be the starter. Against one of the best rush defenses in the league, and a coaching staff that will do everything they can to stop David Montgomery, the Bears will need their quarterback to make plays down the field if they hope to advance. Does anybody believe he can do that?