So What the Hell is Mitch Trubisky?

Holy shit, I remembered the password

*chokes on dust, pushes skeleton of TEC out of the way and begins typing at desk of long abandoned Start Kyle Orton headquarters*

First off this is not a permanent unretirement. I got better things to do than the Bears and they no longer have any power over me.

For the first time in years however I am actually watching them, and one question keeps coming up: what the fuck is Mitch Trubisky?

I've seen a lot of quarterbacks fail for a lot of reasons. Jay Cutler never was going to stop turning the ball over. Rex Grossman was never gonna stop doing that either. Cade McNown was never going to throw the ball with any kind of zip or stop being a petulant turd waffle. Trubisky seems something else.

This is, ostensibly, a QB with a full toolbox. He's not Kyle Orton, there's a real arm there. He's not a gunslinger, what turnovers he's had tend to be bad throws and not bad decisions. So where does that leave us? Why does he, uh, suck? And will he get better?

A lot of people object to that last question. "Of course he'll get better he's young blah blah." Well one of the uncomfortable hidden truths of sport is that progress isn't always linear. Some guys, far more than you think actually, pretty much stay the same guy they were when they got to the pros. If you don't believe me ask Joe Flacco.




So to prove my point here, and break down some possibilities for Mitch's future, I ran a play index query over at Pro Football Reference. Using their adjusted YPA stat, which subtracts yards for turnovers and adds them for touchdowns etc, I searched every QB since 2000 who had thrown at least 425 passes in their first three seasons in the NFL and who had a AYPA mark of 5.8 or worse. That's where Mitch is sitting right now. The results are not super pretty:

As you can see, the QBs who make this many attempts through the first three years of their career and are this unproductive tend to be, well, not very productive quarterbacks. It's not a great list. Still, I think we can throw out a lot of this data and focus on a couple scenarios of who Mitch Trubisky might be. First off I'm gonna throw out all the QBs on this list who were drafted 3rd round or lower. Those guys sucked because, well, most later round QBs suck. No one should expect John Skelton to be good (sorry, corpse of TEC).

After that I think we can throw out the QBs who are not at all similar in style to Mitch and guys like Matt Leinart and Christian Ponder who were weak armed system QBs overdrafted based on their college production and not drafted based on their talent/projectability like Mitch. That leaves I think four possible outcome for our boy:

BEST CASE: DREW BREES
Not surprisingly this is the comp Ryan Pace, who came from the Saints organization, has gone with in the past. Brees, like Trubisky, spent his first year(s) in a terrible system with an overly conservative head coach while making a painful transition from running a spread offense in college to a pro style offense. He didn't become a productive starter until year four and didn't become the Drew Brees we know and love until paired with Sean Payton in New Orleans.

Still, I'm not sure how well this comp works. Trubisky is a much bigger and stronger QB than Brees but despite being praised coming out of college for his accuracy he's yet to flash anything like the insane accuracy and anticipation that has come to define Drew Brees. Still, Drew Brees didn't look like Drew Brees for a a few years either, so anything is possible.

MODERATELY GOOD CASE: ALEX SMITH
It's kind of impossible to overstate how bad early career Alex Smith was. The 49ers drafted him first overall (at the urging of their offensive coordinator, some dipshit named Mike McCarthy who thought he was better than Aaron Rodgers) and then immediately had no plan for him. They once briefly tried throwing him into a Mike Martz offense, which is the most hilarious pairing of QB and coordinator imaginable. He missed a year+ with a shoulder injury. He didn't begin to become recognizable as the accomplished game manager he has been until around 2009. Hopefully Mitch can adapt a little faster than Smith did given the more stable coaching situation and organization he's in, but still if he's a long way away from consistently making plays downfield he'd better at least learn how to master the horizontal and intermediate passing game the way Smith did from 2010-2016.

SURPRISINGLY LIKELY AND HORRIFYING MEDIUM CASE: CHAD HENNE
Henne wasn't drafted nearly as high as Mitch but he was still a pretty well regarded, prototypical QB prospect in terms of size, arm strength, and big school pedigree. Bill Parcells nabbed him and regarded him as the future franchise QB for the Dolphins. He eventually took over the starting spot from Chad Pennington and has spent parts of six different seasons as a starter being the definition of a replacement level QB. He's never been truly abysmal, he maintains a respectable completion percentage and even throws for  decent chunk of yards per game while doing absolutely nothing spectacular of any kind. He's never consistently hit the big play in the NFL and the Dolphins especially kept waiting for a next level that never came.

OH GOD NO WORST CASE: BLAINE GABBERT
If Blaine Gabbert had been drafted after his first, explosive year at Missouri (when he was whispered as a potential #1 overall pick) his resume would look pretty similar to Mitch's at UNC. As it was he played a second year at Missouri and underwhelmed enough to scare off plenty of teams except Jacksonville, who fell for the great arm, great size, and surprising mobility and drafted him in the first round anyway. In the NFL he's been the worst possible QB, one too turnover prone to be an effective game manager but utterly unable to make plays downfield despite his arm, and nowhere near accurate enough to move the ball in the short passing game. Mitch has probably already shown more than Gabbert, but if he never develops the ability to consistently hit the big play and his god awful timing and anticipation keep him from at least becoming Alex Smith and moving the chains consistently in the short and intermediate game, he runs the risk of being a Gabbert: a QB who can't really do anything no matter how much it sure looks like he should be able to.

Unfortunately the number of QBs who have done what Trubisky has done to this point in his career and gone onto great things is fairly small. If there's any comfort to be taken from his slow start it's that every QB really is different, though. The numbers didn't say Drew Brees or Alex Smith could be what they are now until they did it. Still, the truth is that time is running out faster than you'd think with such a young player. If he doesn't show considerable improvement by the end of this year the chances are far better than not that the Bears have once again fallen short in their quest for a franchise QB.

At least this time I don't really give a shit.