Matt Nagy certainly has had easier weeks in his tenure as Chicago Bears coach. This week? With a trip to play the Tennessee Titans on the itinerary, Nagy first had to reshuffle his offensive line after another wave of injuries. Then he had to rearrange the team’s practice routine and meeting schedule when the Bears closed Halas Hall on Thursday after multiple players tested positive for COVID-19.
Getting the Bears ready for a pivotal game on the road against a 5-2 Titans team hasn’t been easy. And the Bears ultimately might not have enough depth or emotional stamina to pull off a road upset. As kickoff approaches, here’s the inside slant on three notable storylines.
1. Mitch Trubisky’s next move
For the fourth time in his NFL career, Mitch Trubisky will be inactive Sunday afternoon in Nashville, Tenn., unavailable to be the Bears backup quarterback after he suffered a right shoulder injury in last week’s loss to the New Orleans Saints.
Trubisky’s injury occurred on the only snap he played, a read-option run in the first quarter that ended with linebacker Alex Anzalone smothering the quarterback after a gain of 3 yards. At the time, it didn’t look as if anything major had happened. Trubisky popped up, threw the football to an official and jogged back to the Bears sideline.
But that was the end of his day. And by the middle of the week there were concerns that the quarterback’s 2020 season and his playing career in Chicago also might have ended.
Trubisky, though, flew to California this week to visit a specialist for further examination on his shoulder and received encouraging news. The preliminary word after is the shoulder injury isn’t as significant as originally feared, with Bears coach Matt Nagy noting Friday that the 26-year-old quarterback will not need to go on injured reserve.
Trubisky missed two starts in 2018 after spraining the AC joint in his right shoulder. He missed one start last season after partially tearing the labrum in his left shoulder. The latter required offseason surgery.
At this point, surgery doesn’t seem necessary for Trubisky’s latest shoulder ailment, perhaps allowing him another speedy return to practice. For the Bears, that would be a best-case scenario.
Still, Trubisky’s career dynamics have changed significantly. In November 2018, Trubisky was the starter and the presumed franchise quarterback for a championship-caliber team. He had every incentive at that point to expedite his recovery process in every way possible. And he did just that, returning to game action in 21 days.
This time, however, Trubisky is a castoff in the second half of a contract year, abruptly benched by Nagy in late September and now needing to prioritize his personal future at least as much as he considers the team’s big-picture goals.
It’s a near-certainty the Bears will let Trubisky’s contract expire in March, leaving him to voyage into free agency. It’s impossible to predict what the market might look like in the spring, though it seems most likely Trubisky will be courted as a reliable No. 2 with starter potential.
For reference, Marcus Mariota — a former No. 2 pick himself — landed in Las Vegas last offseason after fizzling out with the Titans. Mariota received a two-year, $17.6 million deal that positioned him to become Derek Carr’s backup.
From his first day in the league, Trubisky always has been a team-first grinder, constantly willing to do extra to push himself and help the team. Now, though, he might have to condition himself to become comfortable looking out for himself first, taking his recovery and rehabilitation at an appropriate pace and resisting any pressure — internal or external — to return sooner than he should.
Trubisky will have to remain cautious, making certain he doesn’t aggravate the shoulder injury in a way that could be detrimental to his long-term future.
“I’m sure he’s got a lot going through his mind right now as to where he’s at,” Nagy said. “And that’s something we definitely have to look into and see how he’s doing.”
Trubisky’s absence, of course, will leave the Bears in a bit of a pickle going forward. They will head to Nashville, Tenn., this weekend with Tyler Bray taking over backup-quarterback duties for the foreseeable future. And with Nick Foles playing behind a depleted offensive line, it’s not a reach to think Bray could see the field in an emergency at some point.
In nine of the last 22 seasons, the Bears have started at least three quarterbacks for one reason or another, most recently in 2016, when Jay Cutler suffered a right thumb injury and later a season-ending right shoulder injury, and backup Brian Hoyer followed with a broken left arm that ended his year. At that point, Matt Barkley took over, guiding the last-place Bears for the final six games of a 3-13 season.
After Sunday, the Bears will have only seven regular-season games remaining. It’s uncertain when Trubisky might be back in uniform.
And when he is, Nagy will have to reconsider whether he would want to again mix Trubisky into the offensive game plan after what happened on one snap against the Saints.
“We’ll talk through all that,” Nagy said Friday. “We’ll make the best decision. I know this: He’s one of the toughest players I’ve been around. He’s super tough. I have an idea what he’s going to tell me and what his answer’s going to be. So we’ll just have to work through that.”
For the time being, the Bears will be without Trubisky. That puts Nagy and the offense in a dicey predicament. But it also leaves Trubisky in an unfamiliar quandary with the 26-year-old quarterback needing to remember the business dynamics of his plight.
Said Nagy: “I’m going to continue to say this about Mitchell: He is a kid who does everything he possibly can and cares a lot about this game and about his teammates.”
At a time like this, though, Trubisky might be left to elevate his needs above the team’s.
2. ‘A ton of confidence’
It has been awhile, but Bill Lazor still remembers with fondness the growth Ryan Tannehill was showing as a young quarterback. Lazor’s first season with Tannehill was in 2014 in Miami. Lazor was the Dolphins offensive coordinator, and Tannehill was in his third season, breaking through with 4,045 passing yards and 27 touchdowns while ranking fifth in the league with a 66.4 completion percentage.
Signs were there, Lazor recalled this week, that Tannehill’s future in the league appeared bright.
“Everything was on a (promising) trajectory,” Lazor said. “… The guy is smart. He’s tough. He really cares. And he wants to be great. That has nothing to do with his physical abilities — his ability to throw accurately and to run fast, which he can do. But it’s those intangibles that Ryan possesses. Usually when you have those kinds of guys, they’re only going to get better. As long as they have the physical abilities.”
Lazor wasn’t around long enough to see Tannehill’s development through. Four games into the 2015 season, the Dolphins fired coach Joe Philbin after a 1-3 start, pushing to establish a more intense and aggressive mentality. Lazor was shown the door eight weeks later as the offensive continued to sputter.
Tannehill’s journey then included three subsequent seasons in Miami during which he never fully emerged under Adam Gase, sandwiching a 2017 lost to a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee between two pedestrian seasons in 2016 and 2018.
When the offseason in 2019 arrived, the Dolphins were ready to move on, worn out by Tannehill’s inconsistency and injury issues and eager to dump his salary during a rebuilding process. They dangled Tannehill on the trade market and found a taker in the Titans.
Tannehill has found an ideal comfort zone in Tennnessee. And as the Bears prepare to face him this weekend at Nissan Stadium, defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano has been impressed with Tannehill’s efficiency and ability to play within himself.
During a conference call with reporters Thursday, Pagano held up a couple of pages with the Titans’ offensive statistics listed and pointed to all the categories highlighted in green, indicators of their top-five rankings in total offense, rushing offense, first downs and red-zone efficiency.
Tannehill might not be the headliner of those efforts — running back Derrick Henry and a sturdy offensive line deserve a big chunk of the credit. But the quarterback is steady at the controls.
“He’s playing with a ton of confidence,” Pagano said.
The Titans are thrilled to have Tannehill, who provided the perfect parachute for them last season when they benched Marcus Mariota, a former No. 2 pick who never turned into the star the organization dreamed he would become.
Tannehill stepped right in, provided a surge of energy and hope and helped propel the Titans to a wild-card berth and then road playoff upsets of the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens.
Titans coach Mike Vrabel said this week that Tannehills’s preparation habits never changed when he was promoted from backup to starter. But his leadership responsibilities increased.
“Ryan jumped into that,” Vrabel said. “But then he had to perform. That was the thing Ryan did for us. He was decisive with the football. And accurate with the football.”
In the days after last season ended, we highlighted the need for the 2020 Bears to seek out their version of Tannehill, an experienced quarterback who could play at a winning level if their struggling franchise quarterback once drafted No. 2 — Mitch Trubisky — continued to struggle.
The Bears, of course, had the same idea and traded for Nick Foles in March, ultimately promoting him to replace Trubisky as the starter in Week 4.
But the Bears’ early return on investment has been disappointing. Foles has thrown seven interceptions in the six games he has played and has posted a mediocre 80.2 passer rating that ranks 27th in the NFL. The Bears offense also has averaged only 276.2 yards per game while scoring seven total touchdowns in Foles’ five starts.
Tannehill, meanwhile, has remained in a comfort zone working with coordinator Arthur Smith.
Said Vrabel: “The most important thing is that their communications are clear and honest about what they like and don’t like and what our vision is and what we would like to try to get done.”
Sunday will be Tannehill’s 21st start with the Titans, including the playoffs. The Titans have won 14 of his 20 starts. Overall Tannehill has completed 69% percent of his passes during the regular season with 4,565 passing yards, 39 touchdowns and only nine interceptions.
Pagano sees a quarterback who has been consistently calm and efficient and capable of playing well off the rugged running game he has been given.
“It takes all the pressure off that dude,” Pagano said. “And then that opens up the play-action pass, the pop passes, the race routes, the over routes, the shots down the field. It’s very, very difficult (to contain). He’s doing a great job of that.”
In March, the Titans gave Tannehill a four-year, $118 million extension with $62 million guaranteed. The quarterback switch they made in 2019 has worked out.
3. Who’s No. 8?
As Wil Lutz’s 35-yard overtime field goal cut through the evening breeze Sunday and flew between the uprights at Soldier Field, the Bears slipped outside the frame of the NFL’s playoff picture.
Just like that.
Two weeks ago, after an energizing 23-16 road win against the Carolina Panthers lifted the Bears to 5-1, the team’s chances of returning to the postseason for just the sixth time in the last 27 years were increasing. The Bears’ fast start gave them sole possession of first place in the NFC North, and the feel-good vibes felt legitimate. Projection models at fivethirtyeight.com said at the time that the Bears had an 85% chance of making the playoffs.
But since? Two consecutive losses marred by offensive inconsistency have created a mini-slide. Sunday’s 26-23 stumble against the Saints was preceded six nights earlier with a 24-10 road loss to the Los Angeles Rams, easily the Bears’ ugliest performance all season. In a span of six days, the Bears went from having an opportunity to become the first NFC team to reach six wins to slipping several rungs down the ladder.
As it stands, with the Bears reaching the midpoint of their season, they sit as the No. 8 seed in the NFC, tied with the Rams but on the short end of that head-to-head tiebreaker.
The Saints and Rams are each a half-game ahead, in the fifth and sixth slots in the NFC playoff race, respectively.
The newest fivethirtyeight.com charts list the Bears with a 62% chance to make the postseason.
The postseason already expanded to seven teams per conference this season, an enlargement that was made official in March after it had been agreed upon in the new collective bargaining agreement.
This week, however, there was additional talk of allowing half the teams in the league into the playoff party, a proposal discussed recently by the NFL’s competition committee as a contingency plan in the event that the league can’t complete its full 256-game schedule in 17 or 18 weeks because of COVID-19 postponements.
In the pitch within the competition committee, the traditional seeding format that awards the top-four slots in each conference to division champions regardless of their record would be scrapped. And the four first-round matchups in each conference would be determined by winning percentage. As things stand now, the NFC East champion could wind up as the No. 8 seed in the conference.
Such a contingency plan for the playoffs, if needed and formally presented by the competition committee, still would require approval from NFL teams.
The Bears seem to be one of those middle-of-the-road teams that could benefit most from a playoff expansion.
The San Francisco 49ers’ home loss to the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night dropped them to 4-5, 11/2 games back from that No. 8 slot. The 3-4 Lions and 3-5 Panthers also might be worthy of that always inclusive “in the hunt” label.
