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One week before the Bears open their season against the Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy is yet to name a Week 1 starter. On Friday, Nagy was frank about the difficulty in selecting a winner in the ongoing competition between incumbent Mitchell Trubisky and veteran Nick Foles.
“It is not easy,” Nagy said, via J.J. Stankewitz of NBCSportsChicago.com. “It's not clear-cut.”
Despite the uncertainty, Nagy is putting a positive spin on the QB battle and insisted he's happy with the process.
“Sometimes people say, ‘Well if you have two quarterbacks that means you don’t have any,’” (Archer voice) he said, unconvincingly. “We know what we have in these guys. We feel really good about both of them.”
Nagy said the competition has played out as his coaching staff expected, “and now what they’ve done, they’ve put it in our hands to make a decision and I’m just proud of both of them.”
Specifically, Nagy has been happy with Trubisky's improved decision-making, pocket presence, and confidence in throwing over the middle. Nagy complimented Foles—whom the team acquired for a fourth-round pick this offseason—for comfortably adjusting to the team's scheme.
“He's had his own idea on things,” Nagy said. “And I think you can feel that growth of that balance of listening to what we have, us listening to what he has, and doing it our way.”
However, Nagy didn't make the best case that the adage about “two quarterbacks” didn't apply to his team's current predicament.
“Being as brutally honest as I could be, it’s difficult,” to make a final decision, he said.
Nagy's inability to make a decision is alarming, as neither player is an unfamiliar commodity. Trubisky—the no. 2 overall pick in 2017 for whom the team traded four draft picks—has been under center in Chicago for three years, while Foles has started 56 games (including playoffs) over eight seasons. If one of those players had significantly stood out, they'd have the job for Week 1.
