The Chicago Bears offense certainly has its issues.
To start, there’s been no consistent running of the football and Mitch Trubisky’s issues have been well documented. But even on the occasions when Trubisky *DOES* get the ball to his pass-catchers, they haven’t been doing him much favors. In fact, through 10 weeks of the regular season, the Bears have the highest percentage of dropped passes in the league, per The Athletic’s Greg Auman.
Check out the list:
Here are the 2019 drop rates for all 32 NFL teams, again using unofficial counts collected by Fox. Bears have the highest drop rate, Packers the lowest. pic.twitter.com/sP6UDy0N2i
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) November 12, 2019
Nothing like a case of the dropsies to further put a damper on an offense that can’t hasn’t been able to put together much all season. And what makes this even tougher to swallow is that this development represents a massive regression from last year when the offense showed signs of life.
Pro Football Focus points out that the Bears had the THIRD FEWEST dropped passes in 2018. It’s maddening to think about how the Bears have more drops through nine games this season (22) than they did all of last year (14). But we can just throw that into the pile of annoyances from the 2019 season.
So when Head Coach Matt Nagy tells you the offense’s struggles aren’t just pinned on Trubisky, remember that chart above. Because even though Trubisky should wear his share of the blame, he isn’t the only one riding the struggle bus. And when things are tough for that guy, the margin of error becomes that much thinner.
The good news is that the core of receivers who were part of a group who had the stickiest hands in football last year are still employed by the Bears now. Tarik Cohen, Taylor Gabriel, Allen Robinson, and others are too talented to let this slump continue. Perhaps positive regression is on its way over the final seven games of the season. It won’t be enough to get them out from the bottom of the barrel, but incremental improvement as the season winds down would be better than the alternative.