The Chicago Bears were no closer to naming a starting quarterback after the first week of padded practices.
And if a panel of beat reporters on the Waddle and Silvy Show is any indication of what the Bears’ brass has to consider before making a decision, I’m not sure we’ll be getting there soon:
Amazing panel of 7 #Bears reporters. Most believe Foles has slight edge now, but end result was a 4-3 projection that Trubisky will start vs #Lions in opener. This shocked us. @DickersonESPN @danwiederer @kfishbain @dmillerabc7 @MarkPotash @patrickfinley @JJStankevitz pic.twitter.com/62K4QAH5Hr
— Silvy (@WaddleandSilvy) August 26, 2020
QB judges on @ESPN1000:
Tru or Foles?@DickersonESPN – Foles@danwiederer – Foles (slightly)@kfishbain – Foles (by a lot)@MarkPotash – Foles but Tru will start@dmillerabc7 – Foles but Tru will start@patrickfinley – Tru (slightly)@JJStankevitz – Foles but Tru will start
— Brendan Sugrue (@BrendanSugrue) August 26, 2020
Who better to ask than reporters whose eyes are our only window to the state of the competition. Different outlets and different perspectives providing an independent outlook on the situation would certainly bring clarity, right? Well … it didn’t.
Unfortunately, there’s no strong conclusion to be had after polling the beat reporters. Because while six of the seven panelists said Nick Foles has out-performed Mitchell Trubisky in camp, that hasn’t solidified his status as Week 1 starter. That’s because four reporters believe Trubisky will still start in Week 1 despite not looking better than Foles. From that four, only one believes Trubisky has looked better than Foles to this point.
Oh, brother!
So here we are at a navy blue and orange crossroads.
My gut reaction was to write about how this captures the Bears’ QB competition in a nutshell. But that’s not accurate. In fact, the most on-the-nose thing I can write about this is that this is essentially what you’d expect from an organization that has yet to find someone to play the most important position in sports at a high level with any consistency in the NFL’s modern era. This whole situation encompasses everything that it is to be a Bears fan waiting for the team to find a quarterback.