Former Exec Laughs at Overreaction to Mitch Trubisky-Matt Nagy Debut

It's rather impressive how many Chicago Bears fans hit the panic button after the loss in Green Bay on Sunday night. Was it a rough ending to what should've been a win? Of course. However, the amount of backlash towards Mitch Trubisky and Matt Nagy was startling. One would think they literally threw the game away. Here was a young QB making his 13th official start in the NFL in a brand new offense. Here was a 39-year old rookie head coach. Yet people blasted both as if they should've performed like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick in what was their first game together. Sure it wasn't a prolific night: 171 yards passing, 1 TD run, no TD passes, no INTs. Still, it's remarkable how fed up many seemed with Trubisky. Some, bafflingly, even started calling for Chase Daniel after the game. That's how far this madness has gotten. One former scout and exec thinks it's gone way too far, finding it almost comical how impatient people are when results should come if they just wait.

The Mitch Trubisky and Matt Nagy connection can work if allowed to evolve

Louis Riddick knows football. He's been a scout, a pro personnel director and now a prominent analyst for ESPN. He also understands the process of building a quarterback from a project into a starter. As a player with the 49ers, he watched it play out with Steve Young in 1991. Then as a personnel director, he watched the Philadelphia Eagles do it with Nick Foles. He knows that this sort of thing takes time, hard work and patience. That's why he seemed to find amusement at the panic of Bears fans. He insisted they slow down and have some faith in Coach Nagy.

“It’s one game for Mitch,” Riddick said. “I understand that expectations are high because of where he was drafted, too. We get all that. But people need to slow down, pump the brakes, keep it all in perspective and just let Matt Nagy do his work.”

He didn't stop there either. Riddick also pointed out that Nagy is still in the process of erasing all the crap Trubisky had to go through last year under John Fox and Dowell Loggains.

“Last year’s team has no correlation to this year’s team. If it did, and if they were so close and so similar, then the same staff would be there right now that was there last year, but obviously it wasn’t good enough. The kind of offensive football they were playing last year, they were setting football back a hundred years with some of the stuff they were doing. It’s a brand-new day.”

It's a valid point.

One of the problems that started to creep up with Trubisky late last season was an unwillingness to be more aggressive with the football. He'd intentionally tuck the ball away on plays that seemed open just to avoid risking a turnover. That was undoubtedly a product of his former head coach John Fox, a man known for his ultra-conservative nature. That was on display Sunday night. Trubisky didn't take a lot of aggressive shots against the Packers defense. He lamented later that it was a mistake. He was too focused on not taking a sack or turning the ball over. That's why he was choosing to run rather than sitting in the pocket looking for an open receiver. It is a classic case of a young QB thinking too much. Fixing that comes with experience, practice and mastering the offensive system. Something that was never going to happen in just a few months. No matter how good a coach Nagy is. At least give these guys a season to see if they can improve. They deserve that much.