The Chicago Bears are still Mitchell Trubisky's team.
Bears general manager Ryan Pace told reporters Tuesday Trubisky will definitely be the team's starting quarterback in 2020.
The key detail is the season -- 2020 -- because it will be Trubisky's fourth in the NFL. As a first-round pick, Chicago has a fifth-year option on Trubisky, but would need to pick that up before early May in order to keep Trubisky on his rookie deal through 2021.
"We're not at that point right now," Pace told reporters when asked about the option.
There's a decent reason for not yet being at that point: Trubisky might need offseason surgery on his left shoulder, Pace said Tuesday.
Trubisky regressed in 2019 as the Bears as a whole failed to meet expectations. The quarterback completed 63.2 percent of passes for a 17-10 TD-INT ratio and posted an 83 passer rating, which isn't the worst in his career, but wasn't near his 2018 production. Trubisky's lack of reliable play became a recurring theme for the Bears, whose offense frustrated their fanbase in a campaign that came with high hopes of a deep playoff run and ended with a thud in mid-December.
"The first thing that comes to mind for me is just consistency," Pace said of Trubisky. "You see moments, you see games, but for him, stringing together better consistency. You have the peaks and valleys; we just need to flatten that out."
Pace received an extension less than a year after he traded up to select Trubisky with the second overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. He swung a blockbuster deal for Khalil Mack, which came with a new, massive contract. Early returns were positive, with the Bears going 12-4 and winning the NFC North before their greatest weakness, kicker, doomed them in the wild-card round.
They have that position figured out with Eddy Piniero. Their greatest weakness might now be quarterback.
"The word that comes to my mind this season is 'regression,'" Pace said. "Why did we regress in so many areas? We need to figure that out."
Pace and coach Matt Nagy spent much of the presser talking about Trubisky's learning process and fixing other parts of an offense that went from ninth in scoring in 2018 to 29th in 2019. Trubisky's teammates -- Roquan Smith (pectoral), Trey Burton (hip) and Anthony Miller (left shoulder) -- have also undergone or will undergo offseason surgeries, adding to the list of areas needing fixing.
Make no mistake: 2020 will be a pivotal year for the Bears under this regime, starting with Trubisky.
