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The Chicago Bears had to deal with more than a deflating 17-7 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night. They had to deal with what, on the surface, appears to be a quarterback controversy.
With the Bears trailing by 10 points and 3:24 remaining in the game, backup quarterback Chase Daniel entered the game as starter Mitchell Trubisky stood on the sideline, visibly upset.
It appeared Matt Nagy had pulled Trubisky in favor of Daniel, who wasn’t able to mount any sort of comeback in the final minutes of the game.
The Bears PR department said in the dwindling minutes that Trubisky had suffered a hip injury and was questionable to return.
“It’s definitely tough,” Trubisky said after the game, via NBC Sports Chicago. “You just want to be out there with your team. But if you’re not 100 percent, you can’t help the team. I’m not doing the team any favors if I’m not able to run around or throw the ball with accuracy because I’m throwing with all arm.
“So you just got to be smart … but I’m going to fight as long as I can to be out there with my guys. Hopefully it’s something that doesn’t prevent me from being out.”
But there are plenty of things that don’t add up when discussing Trubisky’s injury, including the fact that Nagy apparently wasn’t made aware of it until the fourth quarter even though the play in question happened on the final drive of the first half.
Then there’s the sideline conversation captured by NBC, which showed Nagy and an emotional Trubisky deep in conversation. It looked more like a coach telling his quarterback he was benched rather than an injury discussion. For the remainder of the game, the NBC cameras were glued on Trubisky, who looked visibly upset as he stood by himself.
Nagy said the conversation was him asking Trubisky to be honest about his injury, and that he was and that was the reason why he was pulled from the game — to protect him.
Trubisky said that he “really wasn’t telling anyone” about his injury because he’d hoped to play through it, as evidenced by Chicago’s 80-yard touchdown drive to open the third quarter.
“I’m not doing the team any favors if I’m not able to run around or throw the ball with accuracy because I’m throwing with all arm,” Trubisky said. “You’ve just got to be smart with that factor, but I’m going to fight as long as I can and try to be out there with my guys.”
But many are wondering if the hip injury is legit. How else would a head coach and play caller not know that his starting quarterback was hurt until the fourth quarter?
Trubisky, who said he was examined at halftime, was never in the blue medical tent on the sideline. Nagy said quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone mentioned that they needed to keep an eye on Trubisky a couple of series before he was pulled.
Nagy said he noticed Trubisky wasn’t using his lower body in his throws — that they were all arm — which indicated that his hip was bothering him and accounted for the lack of accuracy after that scoring drive.
Nagy insisted that he needs to “find out more because I didn’t find out the details yet from him, the play that it happened,” because he didn’t talk to Trubisky after the game.
We’ll see if Trubisky’s hip injury is minor enough that he can suit up in Week 12 against the Giants or whether it’ll sideline him again.
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