Mitch Trubisky wasn’t perfect in his first taste of the Bears-Packers rivalry, but the rookie emerged with the arrow clearly pointed up despite the final score.
In his first game since the bye week, Trubisky looked to be headed in the right direction as he set season bests in completions (21), pass attempts (35), and passing yards (297) while posting a more-than-respectable 97.0 passer rating. Trubisky’s improvements from the bye week led to him shooting up Bleacher Report’s weekly quarterback rankings, where Trubisky enters Week 11 as Doug Farrar’s 18th best quarterback. Farrar has Trubisky ranked ahead of Eli Manning (20), Brock Osweiler (21), Blake Bortles (23), and Nathan Peterman (28) among others.
The positives were plenty. Trubisky’s 46-yard touchdown bomb to Josh Bellamy was the kind of throw you want to see your rookie attempt and execute. He did both to cut Green Bay’s lead to six. Trubisky also made a genuine connection with Dontrelle Inman (which will be put to the test on Sunday) and showed he could pick apart a defense when facing a blitz. It’s clear Trubisky came out of the bye week having learned some new tricks he was able to apply in a rivalry game. That’s a positive sign as far as his rookie-year development is concerned.
He also proved to still be a work in progress.
While he has shown the ability to make throws against the blitz, his struggles while being pressured continued. Trubisky went 3 for 9 for 38 yards and a 47.5 rating when facing those situations. There is still the matter of taking untimely sacks, which has gone a long way toward thwarting offensive drives and killing momentum build by some of the things Trubisky has done well. Trubisky has been sacked on 12.2 percent of his drop-backs, which is the highest clip of any qualifying quarterback. He took five sacks against the Packers, a few of which he missed easy check-down passes to open receivers.
Rookie mistakes are going to pop up often for Trubisky. But as long as he continues to show signs of improvement and development, the Bears will (reluctantly) take the bad with the good.