How Mitch Trubisky’s ‘little things’ added up to one huge day for the Bears QB

The last thing quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone does before he leads his guys out of the meeting room and into practice is ask them to list one thing they want to improve that day. Mitch Trubisky’s answer lately has been the same: deep passes.

Last week, Trubisky put it into action after practice, too, staying late with Ragone to work on deep passes.

So when Trubisky found Taylor Gabriel on a deep over route for a 33-yard gain about 15 seconds into the second quarter in the Bears’ ridiculous 48-10 victory Sunday against the Buccaneers, there was a sense of satisfaction from coach and pupil. It was the same throw, to the same receiver, that he sailed two weeks ago against the Seahawks.

“He hit him in stride,” Ragone said Monday. “And there wasn’t a blink in his eye. He had the footwork. He put his foot in the ground. He had conviction. He made a throw.”

Trubisky made a lot of them against the Bucs, completing 19 of 26 passes for 354 yards and a 154.6 passer rating. His six touchdown passes fell one short of Sid Luckman’s 75-year-old record.

For all the gaudy statistics that bolstered Trubisky’s best start as a pro — and make him one of the two leading candidates, along with the Rams’ Jared Goff, for the NFC Offensive Player of the Week Award issued Tuesday — Ragone was most pleased with the little things.

Trubisky drew the Bucs offside with a hard snap count. His sideline demeanor remained intense, even up by five touchdowns. And his throw to Gabriel, which had gone awry two weeks earlier because Trubisky was too focused on trying to get defensive backs to shift along with his eye movement, was perfect.

“I get it, trust me — like everybody, you want the process to go faster sometimes,” Ragone said. “You want the results faster sometimes. . . . But for me as his position coach, the little things [are more important].

“To me, those are the small things that we continue to harp on with him. It’s about growth. It’s about not making the same mistake twice. It’s about going out there and having a control and confidence about yourself.”

It’s about more than a strong sense of self.

“If you don’t play with conviction, you live in the gray,” Ragone said. “And it’s hard to play this position in the gray.”

For weeks, the Bears preached that once Trubisky hit one deep ball, the next would seem easier. That proved true Sunday. The Bears had eight pass plays of 20 yards or more. In the three games leading into it, they totaled four.

Coach Matt Nagy pointed to the Bears’ first touchdown — Trubisky found tight end Trey Burton for a 39-yard score down the right sideline when his defender slipped — as the catalyst.

“Anytime you hit one of those downfield throws, your meter immediately goes slightly higher — your confidence meter,” he said.

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In reality, it started during the week of practice, which Nagy and Ragone said was his best as a Bear. Nagy said the Bears didn’t necessarily dumb down their playbook — “I still had a lot of stuff on my play-call sheet,” Nagy said — as much as they dug into exactly why they liked some of the route concepts against certain looks. They simplified the communication among receivers on substitutions, their personnel groupings and some of the offensive-line communication at the line of scrimmage.

“There are so many variables that go into it, but Mitch understands that we as coaches are trying to do everything we possibly can to make him feel comfortable,” Nagy said. “And I think you saw [Sunday] that we all collectively felt that way about it.”

They saw it in Trubisky earlier in the week, after practice, too.

“He’s got a very good obsessive quality sometimes,” Ragone said. “If he doesn’t feel something’s right, he wants to do more and more of it.”