CHICAGO — Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky brushed off the notion that playing only three snaps (all handoffs) in the preseason contributed to his lackluster performance during Chicago’s 10-3 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night.
“I know you guys (the media) are going to try and draw comparisons like that, but really, the snaps in the preseason have nothing to do with the way we executed, or the sloppiness tonight,” Trubisky said. “We weren’t doing that in practice. We were smooth in practice … it just seemed a little scattered tonight with all of our personnels, and trying to find a rhythm and trying to find our identity on offense. We just put ourselves in bad situations and shot ourselves in the foot. You can maybe contribute it (to the lack of preseason action), but I think it’s kind of a stretch.”
Trubisky finished 26-of-45 for 228 yards for a passer rating of 62.1
The 25-year-old quarterback threw an interception in the end zone into double coverage on the Bears’ second-to-last offensive possession.
“Definitely left a lot of plays out there,” Trubisky said. “Just myself as an offense, we really couldn’t find a rhythm there. Struggled on third down, obviously. That was apparent. We’ve got to be better on first and second down, to stay in manageable situations on third down. I felt like I made some good throws here and there, made some good decisions for the most part, but I think it was just sloppy by myself and as an offense as a whole, just going through all our procedures. It was just tough. We couldn’t find a rhythm.”
Fresh off a respectable second NFL season (3,223 passing yards, 24 touchdowns, 12 interceptions), Trubisky was expected to improve during his second year under head coach Matt Nagy, who won NFL coach of the year honors in 2018.
But Trubisky displayed little growth in Week 1 as he watched the Packers’ defense successfully contain him inside the pocket.
“We wanted to make Mitch play quarterback,” Packers cornerback Tramon Williams said. “We knew they had a lot of weapons, we knew they were dangerous, we knew all of those things. But we knew if we could make Mitch play quarterback, that we’d have a chance.”
Still, Nagy refused to blame Trubisky for the offensive collapse.
“I think he saw (the field) OK,” Nagy said of Trubisky. “But that’s not — again, I didn’t help him at all. I didn’t help him. I’ve got to help him. And then we’ve got to get the run game going. That’s 15 rushes in 65 plays, you’re down 7-3, but we — again, that’s something that we’re going to as a staff get back together and we’re going to figure out, OK, what are we doing as coaches and how can we get better to help these kids out.
“Obviously, unacceptable. Starts with me, so this — I just told the guys in there, ‘This is not who we are.'”
An even greater defensive challenge awaits Trubisky next week when the Bears travel to Denver to face former coordinator Vic Fangio’s Broncos.
ESPN’s Rob Demovsky contributed to this report
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