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Mitchell Trubisky hasn’t been under center for most of his football career. Dating back to middle school through college, Trubisky operated mostly out of the shotgun before acclimating to taking snaps under center in the NFL.
The Bears have run their offense mostly from the shotgun since Matt Nagy’s arrival, including last season about 76% of the time (the sixth-highest in the NFL.) But in Week 1 against the Detroit Lions, Chicago’s usage of the shotgun dropped to 42%.
Trubisky said that Sunday’s game was “the most I’ve probably been under center in my whole career.”
So why the change?
Nagy said it had to do with some self-scouting this offseason and adapting to what his players do well. That, and it helped disguise what the offense was going to do. And, as we know, the Bears offense was incredibly predictable last season.
“It goes into one of those deals where now this is Year 3 for us,” said Nagy, “and you start looking as to what are your strengths of your players. We did some good self-scout here in the offseason. We tried to look at some different things, and you could see that going under center was something that we evaluated.”
Trubisky echoed Nagy’s sentiment, singling out plays under center as those that saw more production last season.
“I just saw the more productive and explosive plays were coming from under center,” said Trubisky. “A lot of times, we were in shotgun, and teams would favor the pass more. When they know [a] pass is coming, it just makes it a lot harder to find completions and get explosive plays because they’re just going to sag off, play soft zone and keep everything in front.”
While Trubisky has been a shotgun quarterback for his entire career, that might change this season. Trubisky has gotten a good feel for taking snaps under center, and he certainly sees the benefit in how it can help this offense.
“It’s just repetition,” said Trubisky. “I’m very comfortable with it. I love the play-actions, the nakeds, the dropbacks from under center. I think it hides the defense even more on whether it’s going to be a run or a pass.”
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