Chicago Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky delivered a message to his detractors on Friday.
“… I’m just trying to prove everyone wrong and prove that my teammates are right,” he said on a video call with Chicago media.
Trubisky, 25, is set to compete in training camp with veteran Nick Foles for the Bears starting position.
The second overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft had been Chicago’s clear starter for most of the past three seasons, but his game declined last year. Trubisky was 28th overall in QBR (39.4), tied for 27th for touchdown passes (17), 21st for passing yards (3138), 32nd for yards gained per attempted pass (6.1 ) and 28th for the traditional quarterback standings (83.0) as the Bears went 8-8 and missed the playoffs.
In 2018, Matt Nagy’s first season as a coach, the Bears went 12-4 as Trubisky passed for 3,223 yards, 24 touchdowns and 12 interceptions and rushed for 421 yards and three touchdowns.
Chicago acquired Foles from the Jacksonville Jaguars at the start of the league’s new year and declared quarterback competition open. The organization later turned down Trubisky’s fifth-year option.
“For me, it’s [the criticism] very motivating, “said Trubisky.” You’re always going to have people rejecting you. He’s got to start a fire under you, which he has for me, and I’m just trying to prove everyone wrong and prove my teammates right. There is so much hard work to be done. And for the people who write you off, I mean, it definitely motivates you in a way that you just want to go and play the best you can. So, I’m definitely excited. And I … You have to get there. “
Foles, the Super Bowl LII MVP with the Philadelphia Eagles, enters the camp with a slight inconvenience of not having worked on the field with new teammates during the offseason. But Foles, 31, comes to Chicago with a strong pre-existing relationship with several of Chicago’s current offensive coaches, including Nagy, who spent time with Foles in Philadelphia and Kansas City before landing the first Bears job.
Both quarterbacks were inside the Bears’ facility on Friday and took part in a walkthrough with the club’s rookies.
“I love competitions,” Foles said on a video call Friday. “I love competition in training. But sometimes competitions, if you approach them the wrong way, become very toxic for a team and an organization because they are about “me” and not the team.
“So the hard part is how do you do it for the team? How can we improve this attack? Who is the best person to execute this attack, who can help the Chicago Bears win games and lead this? team should be the starter. “
Nagy said he was confident Wednesday that Chicago would settle for a starting quarterback before Week 1 – despite reduced camp schedules and the elimination of preseason games.
“Even though it’s a shortened preseason as far as the preseason games and some of the practices go, our coordinators have done a really good job of finding ways to assess them,” he said. “It will come to us. We are very confident about it.”
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