Week 15: Even the losers
Does Trubisky have a future now? And the Jets, yes, those Jets, won.
Alright, fine, let’s talk about Mitchell Trubisky
Here’s something I honestly did not think I’d be writing back around mid-November. Mitchell Trubisky is good enough to drive the Bears to the playoffs.
Sure, he’d done it once before in 2018, but the magic of sophomore season Mitch had taken a beating in the two-ish years since. 2019 saw injuries hit while journeyman backup Chase Daniel proved just as effective for Chicago in the snaps Trubisky missed. 2020 took that frustration to another level when the fourth-year QB was replaced by Nick Foles in the starting lineup.
But Trubisky, horror movie monster to the denizens of Illinois, never stays buried. A brief stay on injured reserve gave way to a stint as Foles’ replacement in the midst of a four-game losing streak. Defeat against the Packers and Lions followed … but now the maligned quarterback has won two in a row and has his team trending upward in the wild card race.
He completed 15 of his 21 passes in a 33-27 win over the Vikings in Week 15, making only one truly baffling “bad Mitch” decision (an end zone interception) en route to 202 passing yards and a touchdown. He added 34 more yards on the ground in an efficient showing that kept his team alive in a shootout and effectively crushed Minnesota’s postseason hopes.
So how did he do it, is there any chance he can keep it up, and does it mean he’s about to get a second contract from the Bears?
What did Trubisky do differently to beat the Vikings?
Head coach Matt Nagy utilized Trubisky in a similar fashion to what Kevin Stefanski has done with Baker Mayfield in Cleveland. He turned his pocket claustrophobia into a feature rather than a bug, designing his offense around an array of roll-outs and play-action passes that put his athleticism on full display.
This created extra time to throw and precious space from oncoming pass rushers. Trubisky was only sacked once (for only a loss of four yards) behind an offensive line that had allowed 33 sacks the 13 games prior.
The Vikings had to respect Trubisky's mobility because he's been, when healthy, a pretty effective runner. He came into Sunday averaging 6.8 yards per carry and a ridiculous 12.8 yards per scramble in 2020. This meant the linebackers who would typically add support against crossing routes and tight end targets had to keep their eyes glued to the Chicago backfield, lest they get burned by a simple bootleg:
This defense-evading ability created opportunities downfield for the rest of the team’s playmakers; Vikings coach Mike Zimmer admitted as much before heading into the locker room at halftime. This was good news for his headliners, but Trubisky's gameplan also elevated underplayed teammates. While past games have been a grind between passes to Allen Robinson and runs from David Montgomery, the Bears scanned through their depth chart to balance the playmaking load around an uneven QB. Chicago's first 10 targets went to six different players. A sweep from rookie wideout Darnell Mooney broke for 16 yards on a scoring drive — the team's second-longest run of the game.
There's no inherent problem in relying on one of the game's top wideouts to carry your passing offense, but diversifying Trubisky's target list allowed Robinson to thrive.
In the team's last game against the Vikings, a 19-13 loss Montgomery missed due to injury, Robinson comprised 31 percent of the team's passing targets (nine of 29) on a day when Bears QBs averaged a pitiful 4.0 yards per pass. In Sunday's rematch, Trubisky — who missed that Week 10 tilt — went to Robinson in five of 21 targets (four catches, 83 yards), went to Mooney for five more (four for 49), and ultimately spread the ball out to nine different players. As a result, Chicago’s average pass attempt sprang for 9.6 yards.
Even Trubisky's incompletions were solid. Rather than the underthrow/overthrow cycle that haunted him early in the season, Chicago's failures through the air came mostly via on-target passes that were swatted down by decent coverage.
Chalking up Chicago’s offensive revival solely to Mitch would be an oversimplification. Montgomery, who ran for a career-high 142 yards Sunday, has seen his yards-per-carry average rise from 3.6 over the first nine games of the season to 6.1 since Trubisky returned to the starting role. There’s a symbiotic relationship between a running back who keeps defenses from crowding passing lanes and a quarterback who prevents opponents from stacking the box, and the Bears’ duo has ridden that to 31 points per game over their last four games.
The final two weeks of the season should give Trubisky more runway to shine. Next week brings the Jaguars and their 32nd-ranked defense in a game we can pencil in as a "W.”. Week 17 will give him the chance to prove himself against a Packers defense that ranks 20th in passer efficiency allowed and, should homefield advantage already be locked down, may rest several key starters.
Problems persist. The team’s offense near the goal line amounts to “hand the ball to Montgomery” and (shrugging cartoonishly). Trubisky, with a chance to ice the game with a three-point lead in the fourth quarter, saw this coverage in the corner of the end zone and decided “hell yeah, I’m gonna jam it in there”:
But Nagy still did an admirable job of mitigating weaknesses against a flawed defense. Trubisky looks like the kind of quarterback with whom the Bears can be a problem.
What happens if Trubisky ends 2020 on a heater?
The Bears opted not to exercise the fifth year of Trubisky's rookie contract. If the young QB continues to play at this level he’ll drift toward the top of a free agent crop that will likely feature risky additions like Jacoby Brissett, Cam Newton, Andy Dalton, and Jameis Winston.
Chicago can let him walk away knowing Foles is on the roster and, with a dead salary cap hit of more than $14 million this spring, pretty much uncuttable. The team also knows he kinda sucks, so that will temper their excitement about his presence.
The club has limited funds thanks to estimated cap space of less than $3 million before it figures out what to do with pending free agent Robinson. Working out an extension of the Trubisky era will be just as tricky from a roster management standout as it is in an offense-building way.
The good news is releasing Jimmy Graham will free up $7 million in cap space and if the front office thinks Akiem Hicks, currently having a banger of a season, is due for a downturn his release or trade would free up $10.5m more. There are ways to continue tormenting Robinson by keeping him and Trubisky together. The question is how much it would cost to keep a peaking Mitch in blue and orange.
Fortunately for us, there’s a recent precedent for an oft-mocked, former top-three pick who turned up just in time for a playoff run on the eve of free agency. Blake Bortles looked cooked in Jacksonville before gamely allowing a top-notch defense to carry him into the postseason three years ago. From there he played well enough to push the Jaguars within one quarter of a Super Bowl berth.
Bortles wasn’t a great option, but like Trubisky in Chicago, he was a reasonable choice in a no-win situation. Jacksonville, opting for continuity and a chance to reclaim their 2017 magic, signed him to a three-year, $54 million extension with nearly half guaranteed. If you need a refresher on how that turned out, Bortles only won three more games with the team and was released before the 2019 season. The Jags haven’t won more than six games in a season since.
This is where Chicago is stuck. A franchise whose quarterbacking high-water mark since 1990 is somewhere between Jay Cutler and Kyle Orton needs to take any glimmer of hope it can find and hold on for dear life. But as the Jaguars found, clinging too fervently just means you wind up dragging your last hope for survival into the deeps with you.
This is a very long way of saying the Bears may be desperate enough to hand Mitch something like $25 million guaranteed for another season of the league’s 20th-ranked offense. Or he could wind up languishing in free agency until he’s forced to settle for a one-year, $1.1 million backup deal like Winston did in 2020. It may all depend on how he finishes his season and how his disciplined Bears management is.
Chicago is too good to be in position to draft a rock-solid franchise quarterback. Its answer may not exist in free agency. The Bears were scared enough about their QB situation last offseason to trade for a clearly broken Nick Foles last year. They could be paranoid enough to convince themselves Trubisky is worth a third, fourth, or fifth chance.
But hey, if he plays like he has the past two weeks, maybe he is. — CD
Week 15 results, in five words or fewer
Bills 48, Broncos 19 (Saturday)
Packers 24, Panthers 16 (Saturday)
Ravens 40, Jaguars 14
Colts 27, Texans 20
Buccaneers 31, Falcons 27
Titans 46, Lions 25
Henry could stiff-arm real lion
Dolphins 22, Patriots 12
Miami is Belichick’s Waterloo … again
Bears 33, Vikings 27
Seahawks 20, Washington 15
Cowboys 41, 49ers 33
Cowboys’ first winning streak!
Jets 23, Rams 20
Cardinals 33, Eagles 26
Cardinals hold off Fightin’ Jalens
Chiefs 32, Saints 29
Browns 20, Giants 6
Ranking the reactions to the Jets’ first win of 2020
The Jets won a game and, in the process, vacated their claim to the top spot in the 2021 NFL Draft with only two weeks left in the regular season. While that’s cold salvation from the misery of joining the 2008 Lions and 2017 Browns in the hall of 0-16 teams, it also leaves them with a very real chance of missing out on Trevor Lawrence.
The team’s Twitter account was … somewhat pleased.
New York fans sick of 52 years of wandering through a Super Bowl-less desert were not. And, because this is the intersection of schadenfreude and cheap content in which I thrive, I have created my top five ranking of the thousands of responses some poor social media intern had to pour through Sunday night.
5.
Gore had 65 total yards. One came on a third-quarter touchdown that gave New York a 20-3 lead. The last six came on the first down that iced the game. He is a goddamn treasure. You leave Frank Gore the hell alone.
4.
This guy is gonna spend his Christmas yelling at his nieces and nephews over Zoom for not appreciating the 1982 electronic football handheld games he got them.
3.
This person put more effort into making this meme than Adam Gase puts into his weekly press conferences.
2.
Imagine being so hopeless a Knicks diehard decides to board the lifeboat.
1.
Simple. Truthful. Defeated. Perfect.
Extend Adam Gase immediately. — CD
Welcome to college football Sunday
While I consider myself a fan of almost every sport, my heart has always belonged to college football. I’m also an Ohio State grad and lifelong Scarlet and Gray supporter, so that broad love of the sport only extends so far. I would never adopt another program to cheer for or wear another school’s apparel; first and foremost, I care about my own team. That said, I normally can appreciate the wonderfully bizarre antics, the heroes and villains, the drama and surprises that college football delivers each season.
This year is different, though. I have still been able to celebrate Ohio State’s success, despite its scattershot schedule and the team itself lacking much rhythm because of it. And that’s about all the enjoyment I’ve been able to muster from this season. I can chalk most of it up to my complicated feelings about college sports happening during a pandemic, with players risking their health and well-being, making sacrifices without being compensated for it (and it’s bad enough for the professionals who ARE getting paid). But there’s an underlying reason that I can’t ignore: an increasingly toxic, tribal, trolly, groupthink discourse that has polluted the sport. (It’s similar to politics, except much more trivial.)
I occasionally wonder if all that negativity has chipped away at what I love about college football, if my ability to relish its small delights, outside of my own fanbase, is mostly gone.
Then I see a play like this on Sunday, and it makes my heart flutter:
In the box score, it’s simply a 9-yard Lynn Bowden scramble on the Dolphins’ first scoring drive of the game. However, that undersells a play that almost seems designed specifically to cater to college football fans. Tua Tagovailoa — who could’ve gone down as one of college football’s greats if he had stayed healthy — handed it off to Malcolm Perry (Navy’s versatile quarterback), who pitched it to fellow rookie receiver Bowden (a QB/do-everything player for Kentucky, the type of weapon Sean Payton thinks Taysom Hill is). Bowden traveled nearly 74 yards, weaving his way through about nine different Patriots defenders to get the Dolphins near the first-down marker.
Dynamic playmakers in college can be dynamic players in the NFL, if they’re used right and more coaches are willing to embrace the idea that not everyone needs to fit neatly in a box. Brian Flores is open to getting creative, and that’s making the Dolphins more exciting (and competitive!). That’s also a positive for the NFL, which benefits from being less sterile of a product.
Bowden’s run won’t make any highlight reels. Yet, it was my favorite play on Sunday because it was a reminder that the true spirit of college football is still alive within me, and sometimes I can even find it in the NFL. — SH
A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly
Two weeks ago, I delved into the mind of Baker Mayfield to try to predict which piece of pop culture he would quote after the next Browns win. I thought for sure he’d pick a favorite Christmas movie, but instead he opted for yet another ‘90s music reference Sunday night:
That took me a little bit by surprise. Although “Waterfalls,” “No Scrubs,” and “Creep” are TLC’s three biggest songs, I wouldn’t have pictured Mayfield jamming to CrazySexyCool in his downtime.
Then, I made an unsettling discovery. Apparently, Mayfield sat down with Keyshawn Johnson last week and explained why he makes these references in the first place: "There's a thing going on in the QB room that I have to slide in a certain quote or there's a fine.”
So, Mayfield might not have even chosen the TLC lyrics himself. Same for all the postgame quotes before that. He’s only doing this so he doesn’t get fined?!
Here I thought I knew the real Baker Mayfield, and it’s all been a lie! Lie lie, lie lie, lie lie. — SH
The Week 15 Pain Index
There was a lot of pain to go around in the NFL this weekend, by many different definitions of the word.
We already discussed how wins for the Jets and Bears may have cost them in the long run. There’s also the Patriots, who saw their AFC East reign and playoff streak end, all while Tom Brady was inching his new team closer to a postseason berth by playing one of his greatest hits (leading a comeback against the Falcons). The 49ers became the latest Super Bowl runners-up to miss the playoffs the following season. Carson Wentz, who wants out of Philadelphia if his demotion to backup quarterback isn’t temporary, had to sit back and watch Jalen Hurts dazzle in a hard-fought loss to the Cardinals.
But does anything, not just this week but this entire season, compare to the anguish of losing Jets? Probably not!
3. Patriots
We debated putting the 49ers and Vikings in this spot too, but the sheer joy of watching the Patriots get eliminated from playoff contention BY THE DOLPHINS with two games left in the season is just too sweet to let pass without comment. — RVB
2. Falcons
Congratulations to the Chargers of the NFC, who continue to innovate in the field of finding ways to swat away potential wins.
It’s worth noting that the Chargers won in OT this week. — RVB
1. Rams
Anytime the Rams lose now, it’s understandable that your first reaction is to blame Jared Goff. This is the fate of quarterbacks who are neither good or bad, just floating somewhere in the middle. But this wasn’t another four-turnover game where it’s easy to blame a sometimes bad signal caller for throwing away a win to an inferior team.
No, this was vintage Rams, vintage St. Louis Rams, where bad coaching (and woeful drafting and terrible personnel decision-making) was a way of life. Starting with the obvious, Sean McVay had 10 days to get his team ready for this game. Seeing the NFL’s No. 1 defense sleepwalking through the Jets’ first offensive drive of the game, one that resulted in a 7-0 lead.
Defensive lapse aside, this one still comes back the disconnect between Sean McVay’s play calling and what his quarterback can and can’t do. The coach has gone to great lengths to hide his quarterback all season, building the offense around the run game and letting Goff dink and dunk down the field only when necessary. Passes beyond the 15-yard-line are virtually nonexistent. So throwing out a playbook stuffed with page after page for short and mid-range gains, why oh why is he taking deep shots on third-and-4 and fourth-and-4 late in the game? In both cases, Goff missed better targets, open receivers who would have at the very least moved the chains.
Playing down to the competition, head-scratching decisions, a lack of preparedness … St. Louis Rams football is back baby! Only in this West Coast version of it, they’re going to the playoffs. Can’t wait to see how that turns out! — RVB