For Mitchell Trubisky, Chicago was far from the sweetest home.
Trubisky’s homecoming on Saturday, however, proved to be plenty satisfying for the former Bears starting quarterback.
Chicago’s 2017 first-round selection picked apart his previous team to lift the Bills past the Bears, 41-15, with a 221-yard, one-touchdown effort in which he piloted four consecutive touchdown drives to begin the day.
"It felt good to come back and play well," said Trubisky on Saturday, via the Bills team website’s Chris Brown. "And I owe a lot of that to my teammates. Run after catch, great plays on defense, great plays on special teams. We dominated the field position and turnover battle in the first half and we did our job on offense and scored points. I just thought we were efficient."
Efficiency was hard to come by during Trubisky’s turbulent run with Chicago over the prior four seasons, but on this day he looked as good playing against the Bears as he ever did playing for them. That was Trubisky’s focus ahead of anything else.
“I just wanted to play well,” Trubisky said, via the Chicago Tribune. “I knew people would be talking about it and hyping it up, but it was just important for me to come out here and do my job and show my teammates that I could play ball.”
For the better part of the previous two seasons, plenty of Bears fans didn’t exactly want to see Trubisky in the starting lineup and Bills fans won’t either. It’s for starkly different reasons, as Buffalo boasts one of the elite quarterbacks in the league in Josh Allen and no Bills rooter wants anything other than to see No. 17 carving up defenses.
So, in a way, Saturday’s showing proves all the more important for Trubisky.
In the offseason, Trubisky was searching for a club in which he could compete for a QB1 spot, but when that didn’t materialize, he ventured to Buffalo. Having previously stated that he was happy to be somewhere he felt wanted, Trubisky has found an opportunity to improve under the umbrella of Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.
So, with a performance such as Saturday’s, Trubisky not only builds the Bills’ confidence in his dependability as a backup, but it also portends to possibilities for the 2022 season. With Trubisky having struck a one-year pact with Buffalo, it’s not out of the question to think the 27-year-old could move into a situation where he would battle for a starting job.
That’s far into the future, though, and on Saturday Trubisky traveled down memory lane, turned in a terrific outing and received a somewhat pleasant greeting. Accounts were that Trubisky got a mix of applause and boos, with the former more prevalent.
“It was very welcoming, and I’m very grateful for that,” Trubisky said. “I love the people of Chicago. The fans are as passionate as anybody out there. … I’m grateful for my journey and where I’m at and just how the guys supported me today and how we played in the first half. I’m just super proud of that.”