TELANDER: Is Tru false? Rookie showing cause for concern

We got to see a great young quarterback on Sunday. And, no, it wasn’t Bears rookie Mitchell Trubisky.

It was second-year man Carson Wentz of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Wentz led his team to a 31-3 destruction of the Bears that was more interesting for the amusing ways the Eagles celebrated touchdowns and an interception (human bowling pins, group “photography,” the electric slide) than for any drama afield.

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Wentz, who is in the running for league MVP, completed 23 of 36 passes for 227 yards with three touchdowns, no interceptions and a 109.4 passer rating.

Wentz’s efficiency and precision have been on display all season. He completed only 15 passes for 199 yards in a rout of the Broncos on Nov. 4, but four of those passes went for touchdowns. In October against the Redskins and Cardinals, he completed just 38 passes combined, but eight went for touchdowns. He had ratings of 126.3 and 128.3, respectively.

So he’s good. Really good.

Trubisky?

Oh, boy.

This is what nobody has wanted to say all season, or at least not since Trubisky took over the starter’s job from ineffective Mike Glennon on Oct. 9 against the Vikings: Maybe Trubisky is a bust.

In seven NFL games, he has thrown for four touchdowns and four interceptions — two of those against the Eagles — and has a passer rating of 70.8. Extrapolated over a career, that’s a worse rating than Steve Walsh, Brian Griese, Chad Hutchinson, Kyle Orton and even Glennon had with the Bears.

There are worse quarterbacks than those mentioned above, but Trubisky was not brought in to be average, or even good. He was drafted second by general manager Ryan Pace to be flat-out great.

So far, the young man has looked like an erratic, often confused thrower who is a terrific athlete but is overwhelmed in a position that rewards cunning, instinct, accuracy, adjustment and swift delivery more than running speed or agility.

Obviously, Trubisky is learning the pro game. He is only 23, and he started a mere 13 games in college.

But here’s the thing — he didn’t have to leave school this year. He had another year of eligibility left at North Carolina, but he wanted to cash in and the Bears were only too happy to oblige, handing him a $19 million signing bonus and guaranteeing him $29 million over four years.

Superstar Wentz, on the other hand, stayed in school at North Dakota State for all five of his possible years, which included a redshirt freshman season. Though he’s only 24, Wentz, who was taken second in the 2016 draft, looks light-years ahead of Trubisky in game knowledge after 27 starts.

Maybe that’s all Trubisky needs, the weathering of this disastrous Bears season and the brutal learning curve that comes with it. Next year, he can blow the doors off defenses and show that his talents are, in fact, worthy of the franchise-savior label.

His receivers are terrible, we know, an assortment of who-are-theys from nowhere. Pace should ask himself why he let wideout Alshon Jeffery get away as a free agent and why his first-round pick in 2015, receiver Kevin White, is a chronic injury case.

Indeed, at this moment, Pace has done about as bad a job of picking his team and coaching staff as any NFL executive around.

His reckoning, and Trubisky’s, will come plainly next year. But that doesn’t mean Trubisky might not be as big a dud as, say, Cade McNown, the Bears’ first-round quarterback in 1999 who started 15 games in two seasons, went 3-12 and vanished into the ether.

Trubisky is certainly a much more pleasant and courteous man than the juvenile McNown, but he needs work going through his reads, which is a red flag.

According to ESPN statistics, Trubisky has thrown off target on more than a quarter of his passes, and his 52.8 percent completion rate is the worst in the NFL. Is this learning or a fatal flaw?

His stats should improve against the pitiful 1-10 49ers on Sunday at Soldier Field. On Dec. 24, he gets a Christmas present, the godforsaken, winless, slapstick Browns, also at home.

But we worry. Failure is out there.

Yet, so is Wentz. Let’s hope he holds the beacon for our mismatched, shaky kid.

Follow me on Twitter @ricktelander.

Email: rtelander@suntimes.com