Matt Nagy provides details on Mitch Trubisky’s hip injury, says he’s ‘absolutely’ the starter if healthy

One day after he took quarterback Mitch Trubisky out of a 17-7 loss to the Rams with what he called a right hip pointer, Bears coach Matt Nagy said Monday the team sees no benefit to shutting the quarterback down for the season.

“No, because that’s just not . . . we’ll see where he’s at,” Nagy told reporters Monday at Halas Hall. “You know, as we go here the next couple days, we’ll see where he’s at. But that’s not what he wants, and that’s not what we want. We want to keep growing.”

Of course, Trubisky has to feel healthy first, a discussion that will continue into this week. If so, Nagy said he’s the starter.

“Absolutely,” Nagy said. “Absolutely.”

Nagy repeated that his decision to put in backup Chase Daniel with 3:24 to play had nothing to do with Trubisky’s struggles — the Bears had one first down on the previous four drives, and that came as a result of a Rams penalty — or the score of the game.

Trubisky said he hurt his hip on the final drive of the second quarter Sunday night. Film shows Michael Brockers’ left knee hitting Trubisky — who turned his back to the Rams defensive end in front of the Bears’ bench — in the hip and back area on a third-and-eight sack with 39 seconds left in the first half.

The injury didn’t require Trubisky to go into the medical tent in the second quarter, Nagy said, because the quarterback had it looked at in the locker room at halftime.

There was some confusion Sunday night about when Nagy first knew about the injury. He said Monday that he was made aware of it at halftime but that he began the third quarter “knowing that [Trubisky] had this issue but knowing it wasn’t enough to affect him.” He didn’t start watching Trubisky’s specific movements until he was told the hip injury was tightening up later in the game.

Nagy said he was aware of outside skepticism about the injury. It wasn’t immediately communicated to the NBC crew covering the game, leading announcers to speculate that Trubisky had been benched for poor performance.

“I’m aware through others that have told me that,” he said. “That’s why in these type of situations, it’s hard. Right after the game when you’re interviewing and you’re talking about the different timelines and everything, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on right after the game.

“This one’s so simple because there’s nothing but pure honesty in all of this. Literally, everything that I just told you conversation-wise, every decision that was made, it had zero to do with his play. It was completely based off of the injury that he had last night and where he’s at, 100 percent.”

Nagy said Trubisky argued to stay in the game when the two had an emotional conversation captured on television during the Rams’ second-to-last possession of the game.

“I sat there and I told him, I said, ‘Listen, man — we appreciate your toughness,’ ” Nagy said. ‘We appreciate you being as tough as you can possibly be and want to stay in the game. But I need to be able to make a decision because there’s a fine line of that pain, or being injured, to where it affects how you play or decisions that you make because of being injured.’ ”

Trubisky needed “to be brutally honest with me in regards to his pain and where he’s at,” Nagy said. He said he then told Daniel to warm up.

“I know [Trubisky] inside-out,” Nagy said. “And I know how he is. And I appreciate that [toughness] about him. But sometimes, I have to protect him from himself. That’s what that was.”