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The Chicago Bears defied all expectations in Matt Nagy's first year as coach. They won the NFC North and came within a missed field goal of winning a playoff game. There are many reasons for them to be excited heading into 2019, but they'll also be playing under the added weight of lofty expectations.
A lot of people will be predicting them to regress, and they'll need to prove them wrong. Mitchell Trubisky is heading into his third year in the league and second year in Nagy's system, and the Bears are counting on him to have a big season.
Offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich has liked what he's seen from Trubisky so far this season, saying he looks like a whole new player.
Article Continues Below“It is literally night-and-day in all the right ways,” Helfrich said, via Larry Mayer of the team's official site. “Our standard for him is extremely high. But just as far as the operation of not only what he’s supposed to do, what the defense is doing, manipulating protections, just the air about him is way different and everybody has noted that, observed that in various ways. Therefore, people around him are playing better and that helps too.”
That's music to the ears of Bears fans. Trubisky made a huge leap last season, but he still has plenty of room to grow. Trubisky himself also talked about how having the extra offseason to get the system down has helped everybody.
“I think ‘smooth’ is really a good word to describe how things are going,” Trubisky said. “Everyone’s on the same page. Everyone knows what they’re doing in Year 2 in this offense, so it’s a lot of fun just getting out there and going through it and just being even more detailed than we were last year within each play,” he explained.
That all sounds great, but it's still early. Offseason hype doesn't mean much when the season starts, and it'll be very interesting to see how Trubisky looks when the lights come on.
