NEWSLETTER
The folks at Pro Football Focus have shown their love for the Bears over the last year. Six Bears defenders landed among the site’s 101 best players in 2018. Offensive lineman James Daniels earned all-rookie honors from the site, which gave the Daniels and his teammates along the line a quality grade. And even before the season started, PFF applauded the Bears’ offseason moves that helped push their wide receiving corps to the top half of the league.
But things haven’t always been so peachy regarding their assessment of quarterback Mitch Trubisky, much to the chagrin of Bears fans.
HOWEVER, the future is bright. So says this graphic from Pro Football Focus:
Over the last half of the season, Mitchell Trubisky saw a spike in his overall grade – are even brighter times to come for the young signal-caller? pic.twitter.com/fGHtaWsgEL
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) April 7, 2019
Yep, you read that right folks – it’s praise for Trubisky from PFF. Soak it all in!
Trubisky posted a 72.8 grade in Weeks 10-17, which ranked him in 16th among quarterbacks. That’s smack dab in the middle of the pack, which is nice. And while nothing special, that sample presents a glimmer of hope for the optimistic type that the 63.6 overall grade doesn’t.
There is something that doesn’t quite add up here. Trubisky’s run of respectable play came during a six-game span in which he completed 70.1 percent of his passes and averaged 212.3 passing yards per game. He threw 8 touchdowns against five interceptions, while posting a 94.4 passer rating. Not bad! And if you extrapolate those stats over a full 16-game season, it comes out to 3,397 yards, 21 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions. Hey, that’s not bad at all!
What’s not adding up is that if that six-game stretch for Trubisky was good enough to earn a middle-of-the-road grade, then why didn’t his full-season stats – 3,223 yards, 24 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, 66.6 percent completion rate, and 95.4 passer rating – earn him a better overall grade? Trubisky’s six-game sample extrapolated over 16 games and 14-game sample aren’t all that dissimilar. What gives?
Because PFF’s grading scale isn’t an open book, we might not know what exactly is leading to the difference of opinion. And if you had questions about PFF’s grading style before reading this, then you might leave this post as confused about the site’s grades as you were before today. But hey, numbers-backed optimism is totally my vibe and very much worth sharing.
