Is The Bears Defense Bad For Mitch Trubisky?

Hit play on this music,

then his play on the episode and fast forward to 32:35 and let the football camp visuals pour over you

We are well into training camp now, the first preseason game is THIS Thursday at Soldier Field, and all the talk around camp is that the defense is unfuckingbelievable and that Mitch Trubisky is struggling. That’s not unusual for this point in the year across the league. In this era there’s less practice time, fewer mini-camps, fewer live reps. The offense is always going to lag behind the defense because they’re installing new plays and systems, and so much of the offense is just based on timing and rythm with the weapons.

Mitch Trubisky doesn’t have a lot of time though and neither do the Bears. The Bears have a two year window to win a Super Bowl before the salary cap really starts to force them to make difficult decisions about key pieces on the team. So when all the reports are that Mitch is struggling, I can intellectually understand why, but emotionally I am looking like this

Everyone knows that the only thing holding the Bears back right now is the quarterback position and maybe the kicker. The defense, the line, the running backs, receivers, all of the groups appear to be good enough. And it got me to thinking…is the Bears defense SO good that it hurts Trubisky’s development? It’s a dumb thought, but I have convinced myself that it is true.

I heard about a study one time about play circuitry involving rats. If you have two rats and one is significantly bigger they’ll play and the bigger rat will pin the smaller rat. If the bigger rat doesn’t let the smaller rat win at least 30% of the time then the smaller rat won’t want to play anymore and will develop psychological and sociological issues inside of their little rat community. The Bears defense is the big rat and Mitch is the little rat.

If every day you’re doing drills against a defense that has Hicks, Mack, Goldman, Roquan, Fuller, Haha, and Eddie Always…how can you deveop ANY confidence as a young Quarterback. He’s probably sitting rushing, forcing, getting happy feet, and overall feeling pretty shitty about himself when in reality that defense would fuck up 99% of all quarterbacks…ever. It is not his fault. The defense is too nasty to get in a rythm and to feel good. So it bothers me when Nagy never plays him in the preseason. It might be nice for Mitch to settle in an realize “oh shit, other teams actually suck compared to our defense and this isn’t so hard”. Then he can just play. He can get a look against a group that isn’t filled with All-Pros at every level of the defense. It would probably be nice for a change. So I know Mitch won’t get many looks, or possibly any looks at all on Thursday vs Carolina, but it would be nice to see him play a full half against some teams that stink so he knows what it’s like to go up against a normal defense.