Chicago Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky is under fire for what is considered to be a terrible performance in the team’s season opening loss to the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night, in Chicago.
Trubisky, 25, finished 26-of-45 for 228 yards and an interception, for a horrendous passer rating of 62.1, and fans and media alike are taking him to task over it, asking if only taking three snaps during the preseason contributed to the poor play.
“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, according to ESPN’s Jeff Dickerson.
“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.”
“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.”
The Packers wanted to force Trubisky to beat them, and the way the game played out played right into the Packers’ plans.
“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.”
Now the Bears will have to hope they, and Trubisky, can bounce back as they travel to Denver to face the Broncos and former defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.