Kyle Long is likely to end up becoming a talk radio guy...I listened to him yesterday and he seems to be a natural. Well spoken and entertaining. This is a link to just one of the topics he touched on... https://sportsmockery.com/2020/02/kyle-long-hints-mitch-trubisky-and-matt-nagy-are-a-bad-fit/
I think this is something we've all seen and agree with. I know most game or post-game threads this year were littered with questions of why Mitch wasn't being allowed to roll out of the pocket, why he was throwing 100 times a game, why the run game wasn't being leaned on in a more traditional fashion (jet sweep misdirections don't count)... Nagy and Trubisky don't fit together, and while we've all seen it, to hear Long say it as a former player and teammate means that the blatantly obvious explanation is likely the right one, unfortunately. I also think Kyle Long is going to be a major broadcast personality in the near future. Dude is doing everything to get on that track quickly, and has a knack for it. I'm gonna see if I can go back and listen to that broadcast he was on, being quoted in this article. Would be eager to hear that. I also think that Akiem Hicks may end up in that line, as well, one day.
"However, things are rarely that simple in the NFL. Nagy’s scheme required a quarterback well versed in reading defenses, going through progressions and delivering on time and on target. All things Trubisky hadn’t mastered in just one year of college as a starter. Now the Bears are paying the price for that oversight." This was a very telling couple of statements. This just goes to show you that the Bears still do not have a clue how to match a QB with a HC. Either they do not understand the strengths and weaknesses of both or they just don't care. Regardless, a winning culture starts at the top. I've said this for years. From the top, you work your way down and each person in turn works well with the next. Until you get to the players. (The Bears haven't had that since Halas. 85 was an anomaly as the team was blown up shortly to follow due to lack of leadership.) We need to stop constantly trading away draft picks and start collecting them. We also need to stop this "square peg, round hole" philosophy this team continues to possess. If you are going to run a shotgun offense, get a shotgun QB and a HC that wants to operate out of it. It's not freaking rocket science.
What's really fun about this? The Bears picked the first QB. They picked one that couldn't read defenses, go through progressions, or deliver on time and on target. There were QB's available that could do that. But they picked this one. And then picked a HC that wasn't compatible with that. Man. Dysfunction at every turn. Glad Pace got extended...
I know that quote isn't from Long, but Long's actual quotes in this article clearly articulate why Ryan Pace should be fired immediately. He drafted a raw QB with below-average intelligence (passing on some other QBs who shall remain nameless), then compounded this catastrophic failure by hiring a HC who has stubbornly refused to tailor his offense to the QB's shortcomings and failed to develop said QB into at the very least a middle-of-the-pack starter. Good for Long to call out this shit. It makes me feel bad for all the other good players on the roster who know all this and know none of it is changing for 2020.
"It’s easy to forget that Trubisky was drafted before Nagy was the head coach in 2017. He was viewed as a good fit for the type of offense the Bears ran at that time under head coach John Fox and offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains." As far as the current clown show goes its important to remember this right here is where it started to fuck up. Don't worry about Kevin White, he's not important, not really. It was here, and it was above even Pace cos just as flyer is talking about this fuckup came right from the top. Putting aside the fact Fux should never have been hired in the first place.... after following up a 6-10 season with a 3-13 Fox had no business whatsoever still being the HC of this team when Trubisky was drafted. There is one reason and one reason only that Fox got a 3rd year and that was because the McFuckskeys were not prepared to eat 2 years of dead contract. That's it. Same reason Pace won't be fired till next offseason despite amassing a pathetic 34-46 record after 5 years in charge. I hear Bears fans say the McFuckskeys aren't cheap. When it comes to players, yes maybe they aren't cheap cos they let the GM sign/extend whoever they want cos they don't have a friggin clue anyway. But when it comes to senior positions, ownership are undoubtedly 100% cheap c_nts! They aren't committed to winning, that's why they haven't won! The only thing they're committed to is keeping the cash register humming and they''ll whore out the team's history and the NFL100 "celebrations" and anything else they can think of to achieve that and if by chance the team somehow lucks into a random SB well then hooray-fucking-henry! Exiting my rant for a second.... im not even sure I 100% believe the above quote. Cos remember, Pace didn't even tell Fox who he was gonna draft. Seems hard to believe Pace was really that into tailoring things for Fox at that time. Everyone in Halas Hall must've seen the writing on the wall re Fox. So who was Pace drafting Trubsiky for? Did he even know?? Making an effective HC-QB combo is hard enough when you know who the HC is gonna be. Trying to do it when you don't even know that, nigh on impossible id say. But then that's the Bears. If there's an ass-backwards fucktastic way of going about it they'll find it.
I mean yes absolutely, but it somehow manages to be even worse than that! Pace didn't even do the most basic function of his job and perform due diligence on Deshaun Watson!! That just blows my fucking mind. Won it all in college, has a mass of numbers, experience and intangibles to go off. Was widely considered a lock top2 QB in the draft, if not #1. And you don't even schedule visits, interviews, workouts??! Fired on the spot. It just beggars belief.
Long wants it, and everything he's said indicates he wants in as soon as possible, I can definitely see it happening. Plus he has his Dad's media connections to assist on top. Hicks, if he does break in, it won't be locally. He has well and truly burned that bridge after the ESPN and Score fiascos. He'd have to try for the national route, and frankly he's not a big enough star. To the thread, the answers here are simpler I tihnk. Pace thought Mitch was "the guy" with the raw talent that could be shaped. He then saw Nagy as the guy to do that shaping. He missed on both counts. I'm really tired of hearing that we should excuse Pace for Mitch, because he was a draft consensus #1 QB. But guess what? The "concensus" was fucking wrong too. His job is to be right. He was wrong, at the most important positions, and he's doubled and tripled down since. I don't need to see this as a "he did the best he could". RESULTS are all that fucking matter. And defensively he has done a pretty good job. I'm weak on Nagy but even that can work. But Mitch is a lost cause, IMO. I'd love him to prove me wrong, prove all of us wrong, but it is just long shot fucking hope there.
Like many others I was calling for Fox's firing after 2016. There was absolutely zero upside bringing him back for 2017 if the plan was draft and develop a QB. Now imagine if Pace had fired him then and brought in either Nagy or McVay or a similar type coach prior to the draft. That coach's input could be considered and instead of Trubisky, we draft another QB. We all know that Nagy was really high on Mahomes. Instead, Pace cut Fox out of the QB draft process completely, all while knowing he was still likely going to fire him after 2017 unless a miracle happened and we made the playoffs. It seems evident that Pace wanted to own the QB draft process entirely himself, not share it with Fox, and definitely not have to share it with a new offensive-minded HC. And look where that got him.
With age comes experience one would hope. Maybe Pace learned from his mistake drafting Trubisky and will allow Nagy to be part of the process of adding QB’s both via draft and FA going forward. Hopefully Nagy is a better evaluator and the QB position can finally be solved. It’s the only option at the moment. As for what I have read about Kyle Longs radio stint he sounds like a natural. His quotes on Trubisky seemed a little odd to me though. Trubisky was drafted to be a play action dependent QB? Throw the ball down town? Has anybody been paying attention to Trubisky’s deep passing accuracy? What am I missing? Trubisky would benefit from having a strong running game. Who wouldn’t. But you don’t take the first QB in the draft at number 2 if he can’t sling the ball around at will.
Trubisky's skillset definitely lends itself to the playaction and rollout game. If the Bears had a strong running game and went to a playaction dropback out of the I....Trubisky would have better windows to throw to and his accuracy would increase. Right now he's throwing to covered receivers going down the field and he's not a drop it in the basket type of guy so he's missing a lot. Mitch was a miss in terms of where he was drafted. That is something we all know. But Long was spot on in terms of the type of QB he is and how he is being used.
So I'm not going to rehash and pile on to what's been said about Nagy and Trubs not being a fit. We've beaten the shit out of that dead horse. This is what I want to focus on. To build on Ev's point here, in the 2+ months Pace had to schedule interviews, meet with guys at combine/Senior Bowl/EW SHrine/private interviews/regional meets, he couldn't find 10 fucking minutes for a Heisman runner up and National Champion who beat the best college coach at Alabama? He. Didn't. Meet with him. Mongo and I touched on this months ago when the news came out of DeShaun Watson's camp--but that means Pace made his decision during the NCAA season at QB. That IMO isn't what's talked about enough. I'm not going to rail on passing on Mahomes. Pat Mahomes' scouting report out of college was him being a gunslinger with questionable footwork who tended to get lazy then relied heavily on his cannon of an arm to get him out of bad situations which can work at an Air Raid school like Texas Tech (and Vandy) but not against real NCAA teams. Does that sound like anybody the Bears gave 2 first round picks plus more and Kyle Orton for, who is the best quarterback in the history of this sad, 100 year old franchise that Phil Emery gave a lot of money to that Mitch replaced? I get why (at the time) the bears passed on Mahomes, because his comp was Jay Cutler. And after the years of bad Jay/shitwad, very few of you (I'd have to resurrect the old draft thread to confirm--but I think Mongo was the only one) wanted Jay 2.0. For what its worth, myself and many others wanted Watson. Then we have the conversation of the position Mahomes was put in versus Mitch. In Mitch's defense (and I'm not defending the bad QB), Mahomes probably isn't a superbowl winning (and season) MVP and All Pro under Fox and Frodo followed by Nagy and a dog ass OLine. Mahomes got to sit behind Alex Smith under the genius, Andy Reid while the bears got a Reid acolyte who ignored the run in the 2017 playoffs which is why they lost. To circle it back home, its Pace's mess to fix, and if he doesn't--he's gone in 1-2 years. Sadly, 'treading water' means we'll see Pace for a while.
