NEWSLETTER
Detroit Lions cornerback Darius Slay picked off a pair of Mitch Trubisky passes, but still came away feeling like the Chicago Bears rookie quarterback was the real deal.
Unfortunately, Slay also presented Bears fans with a disappointing truth, which, in his mind, could keep Trubisky from being successful: “Last week, I think they ran the ball pretty good on Cincinnati,” Slay said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “They can’t run the ball on us, so he had to throw the ball. Our goal was to make him beat us and we knew he couldn’t do that.” Ouch.
One week after rushing for 232 yards against the Bengals, the Bears could only muster 43 rushing yards, as Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen combined for 12 carries and 38 yards against the Lions.
So with the Bears lacking the kind of running game that could sustain drives and keep Matthew Stafford off the field, Trubisky was trying to make up ground quickly by forcing throws into windows that weren’t there. The rookie was simply caught trying to do too much, just as the Lions cornerback (and game plan) had foreseen.
Even though Trubisky has certainly taken some major strides compared to where he was when he started and where we expected him to be when he was drafted, forcing the rookie to win a divisional road game with a one-dimensional offense is a less-than-ideal situation.
In order to be successful, the ground game needs to be productive. This isn’t necessarily a knock on Trubisky, as some of the league’s best quarterbacks function best when there is balance on offense. Jared Goff has Todd Gurley. When he was healthy, Carson Wentz had Jay Ajayi and LeGarrette Blount. Dak Prescott looked a lot better when Ezekiel Elliott was in the backfield.
And, of course, if Trubisky had a more talented group of receivers, some of those closed windows might’ve turned into open opportunities. But that’s not what the Bears have right now. And until reinforcements come (there’s no guarantee they will), Trubisky will have to find other ways to succeed with what he’s got.
As it stands, the Bears have a razor thin margin for error on game day … and it shrinks if its best offensive weapon is taken out of the picture as quickly as Detroit erased the running game on Saturday.
