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During his rookie campaign, Trubisky’s 50% accuracy percentage on passes of over 16 air yards was enough to earn him 13th place out of 35 qualifying quarterbacks. The average that season was 48.1%, though, so it’s not like his numbers strayed significantly from the mean. Likewise, out of 52 qualifying attempts, the Bears’ quarterback had 4 inaccurate completions--plays where his receiver bailed him out despite the ball getting away from him. This might lend some fuel to the fire that he might have benefited from his receivers’ ball skills, except this was back in 2017 when receivers with ball skills were hard to find in Chicago. Additionally, he also had exactly 4 “accurate incompletions,” plays where his pass went to the right place but other factors interfered. Overally, Trubisky’s efficiency score (using a metric that Kinsley explains
much better than I could) was 0.96, compared to a league average 0.99.
In short, with sample sizes this small, Trubisky was a perfectly average quarterback his rookie year when it came to down-the-field accuracy. There was just enough inconsistency there to give his detractors and his defenders equal ammunition.
He was 2nd in the league on passes going 25-29 air yards and fifth on passes going 35-39 air yards. He didn’t attempt passes at some ranges, and so Kinsley’s system penalizes him there, but his real weakness seemed to come on passes at 20-24 air yards (where he only completed 37.5% of his passes and came in 32nd).
Of particular note to me was the fact that a rookie Trubisky was 10th in the league when it came to throwing under pressure (accurate 38.5% of the time) but 26th in the league with a clean pocket (61.5%). So, prior to his first year with Matt Nagy, Trubisky was proving everyone right. He was able to throw a deep ball well when he was on the move, but in a clean pocket he’d make some really bad misses.
It’s also worth noting that Trubisky aired the ball out a lot in 2017, relative to his total number of passes. He had 52 qualifying passes out of 330 attempts, meaning he went deep on about 16% of his attempts. By comparison, two of the leaders in deep ball accuracy were Dak Prescott with 14% (68/490) and Aaron Rodgers with 12% (29/238). Thus, in each of his 12 games, he gave fans an average of four chances to form an impression, and those impressions were erratic enough to support any narrative."
Every so often, it’s nice to have a fact check on some of the opinions and speculation running around about the Chicago Bears—especially when quarterbacks are involved.
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Nagy had the data on Mitch, but still ran an offense where he knew he would struggle and regress.