Chicago Bears fans hearing a familiar story.
For Chicago Bears fans it is deja vu all over again as it relates to the quarterback position. The team just completed its first full week of practice and with the off-day Monday, began week two yesterday and unfortunately, the message delivered by reporters was an all-too-familiar one. These reports may have come as a bit of a surprise considering the narrative coming out of camp last week.
You see, last week there was a lot of talk about how the tight ends, Jimmy Graham and Cole Kmet were very impressive. After the dearth of productivity out of that group last year, this was a welcome change. As it related to the quarterbacks, there were reports that Mitchell Trubisky was holding the slight edge over Nick Foles.
However, a deeper dive into those tweets and reports told the truth. Yes, Mitch may have HIS best practice as a Bear, but that isn’t exactly a high standard against which he’s being judged. Furthermore, the reports were simply that he looked better than Foles.
However, you didn’t see anyone tweet that either quarterback looked good by traditional standards. That was telling. Comparatively speaking, one may have looked better than the other, but when you judge them against league-wide standards, they are still underperforming.
That was confirmed by many reporters following practice on Tuesday. Both Brad Biggs and Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, along with Zack Pearson made it pretty clear that the quarterbacks have underwhelmed so far. Yes, one may be slightly outplaying the other, but up to this point, it appears to be a battle of mediocrity.
According to Biggs, the “Bears struggled to move the ball through the air today, a somewhat recurring theme to this point.” Wiederer was a little harsher. He stated that neither Mitch nor Foles has found any kind of groove yet and that “there has been very little evidence that this offense is headed for the top 20 in the NFL.” He concluded, “if Nagy is at all scarred by 2019, a few of 10’s wild pitches today will cause insomnia.”
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In other words — yuck.
Many fans were ready to spike the football and declare the quarterback competition over. Others were touting the “improvement” Mitch had demonstrated in practice. Well, it appears many of those reports were overblown. And as more and more reports flow out of camp casting significant doubts on either quarterback’s ability to be even average, the focus and all the fans’ ire should shift to Ryan Pace.