Cord-cutting Mitch Trubisky isn’t soft — he’s just doing (and saying) what he’s told

If you’ve played organized sports, you’ve probably known someone like our guy. He’s the one who believes everything his coach tells him.

If his coach dedicates a game to the memory of an Alaskan Malamute named Champ who gave up his life in the name of bad-breath research, our guy draws paw prints on his basketball shoes and charges out of the locker room.

If his coach tells the team to run through a brick wall for him, our guy goes helmetless while his teammates hang back and discuss the indignity of having parents who set scandalously early curfews.

So if you’re asking me if Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky was serious the other day when he said he wanted TVs at Halas Hall turned off to shield his team from negativity, my answer is: Oh, yes, absolutely he was serious. Our guy was a temperance zealot taking a hatchet to whiskey barrels.

Trubisky grabs hold of whatever coach Matt Nagy tells him and runs with it at world-record pace. His is the most literal interpretation of Nagy’s gospel. Whenever Mitch says something that sounds even the slightest bit like a coach, you can bet that it started with Nagy. And what has the coach been preaching lately? Togetherness. Unity. What has he been railing against? The threat of the media dividing a team that has lost four straight games. So watch out for TVs, a danger to all that is good and right in the world.

At Trubisky’s regular Wednesday press conference, a reporter asked him how he deals with outside criticism.

“I’ve done pretty good with that,” he said. “Just trying to get some of these TVs in the building turned off because you’ve got too many people talking on TV about us and what they think about us. What we should do, what we are and what we’re not. But they don’t really know who we are or what we’re capable of as people or what we’re going through or what we’re thinking. It’s just the outside viewers looking in. So (for me it’s) tunnel vision, earmuffs and just come to work every day and try to get better.”

“Tunnel vision” and “earmuffs’’ are two of Nagy’s favorite coach-speak terms for how players should deal with what people outside of Halas Hall are saying about the team. If I had to guess, I’d say that Nagy or another coach recently counseled Bears players to stay away from anything that might carry negative (honest) viewpoints of a 3-5 team that was supposed to be a lot better than it is. And Trubisky, playing his leader role to the hilt, took it a few steps further and wanted to ban Stephen A. Smith and other TV yakkers from the Bears’ locker room.

The only surprise is that he didn’t stand in front of the media Wednesday and call for a national prohibition on TVs, computers, social media and extravagant clothing.

Mitch Trubisky, living off the grid.

His stance against Halas Hall televisions isn’t a reflection of a soft quarterback who lets everything and everybody get inside his head. I don’t think there’s any room inside his head for anything other than X’s, O’s and coaching words to live by. He takes what he’s told and goes to places few other athletes have dared walk. Soft? Overly sensitive to criticism? I don’t think so. Robotic, obedient, true believing and eager? Yes. If only that had something to do with playing quarterback well.

When Trubisky spoke at the start of training camp about wanting to focus on what he called the little things, including “cleaning up in the locker room,’’ reporters looked at each other with the universal look of, “Did he just say ‘cleaning up the locker room’?’’ As it turned out, the idea of a clean locker room came from a book touting the leadership lessons that could be culled from New Zealand’s successful national rugby team. Nagy had suggested Trubisky and other players read it.

And Trubisky being Trubisky, he took to it with the earnestness of an Eagle Scout. He takes everything to heart, which is great if we’re talking about the importance of avoiding processed foods. But when coaches or leadership gurus say something, it’s not always to be taken literally.

The Bears play the Lions on Sunday at Soldier Field, and the game will be televised. As in, “on TV.’’ You can see how Mitch might be conflicted here.