MORRISSEY: Growing Trubisky is Job No. 1, and the Bears are blowing it

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Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky talks during a news conference after his team’s 15-14 loss to the 49ers on Sunday. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

As long as John Fox and Dowell Loggains are here, Mitch Trubisky is going nowhere as a quarterback.

The Bears’ head coach and offensive coordinator want to win games, and they don’t care how. That explains why Trubisky ended up looking like a piece of furniture Sunday instead of someone who throws a football for a living.

Clear-thinking people don’t care about the Bears winning games right now. They see the bigger picture, which is filled with three things: Trubisky, Trubisky’s improvement and — OK, make that two things.

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Obsessing on five short field goals by former Bears kicker Robbie Gould in a 15-14 San Francisco victory might help fans get out their anger at all that’s wrong with the world, but it is shortsighted.

Same with playing a game of what-might-have-been over 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, whom the Bears couldn’t pry away from the Patriots. The former Rolling Meadows High School and Eastern Illinois product chewed up the clock and the Bears at Soldier Field on Sunday. He looked a lot better than Trubisky did. And so what?

The worst thing about Sunday’s loss is that a young quarterback, the one the Bears gambled on so heavily in the 2017 draft, isn’t making progress. That’s not on Trubisky. That’s on ownership and management for allowing dumb short-term goals to get in the way of long-range vision. It is on the McCaskeys and general manager Ryan Pace for not telling Fox and Loggains that this season is all about the quarterback and to knock it off already with the conservative game plans.

That message obviously hasn’t been delivered. If it had, Trubisky wouldn’t have had a measly 102 passing yards.

It is true the 49ers controlled the clock Sunday. It is also true that Trubisky doesn’t have much in the way of receivers. But if it is possible for something to be truer, it is that the 49ers have one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Throw the ball down the field. Why is this concept so difficult to embrace?

Trubisky’s longest completion went for 21 yards, but running back Tarik Cohen picked up most of the yards on that play after the catch. What in the world are the Bears doing? If you’d prefer that sentiment in a declarative sentence, here: Hell, Mike Glennon can do this.

“Winning is the No. 1 priority,’’ Glennon said after the game.

No, kid, it is not.

If the Bears plan on getting rid of Fox and Loggains anyway, they should do it now. Otherwise, there will be four more games of this. Of nothing. Of no progress by the second overall pick in the draft. I know what the response is: Who’s supposed to make decisions about the offense if those two are gone?

And that, friends, is what’s wrong with this franchise. It is the inability to identify people who can make things better, whether in the short term or the long term. When was the last time you felt confident that the people making the decisions had a Plan B in place months in advance?

The Bears fire somebody, and upon realizing they have to find a replacement, the look in their eyes is one of someone seeing a completely new kind of math problem. Here’s a hint, fellas: It is called a plus sign.

Garoppolo finished with 293 passing yards. He hit receivers in stride while he was under pressure. He threaded passes between Bears defenders. More importantly, he looked totally in control of the San Francisco offense, which had 23 first downs to the Bears’ eight. Sunday was a reminder of how far Trubisky has to go, but it also was a reminder of where Garoppolo has been. He spent 3½ years watching and learning under Tom Brady in New England, and it showed.

A total of 8,498 ticket holders didn’t show up Sunday to watch a bad Bears team take on a one-victory opponent. If the weather hadn’t been so nice, that number would have been much higher.

Too bad. It is the only thing the McCaskeys seem to understand.

Follow me on Twitter @MorrisseyCST.

Email: rmorrissey@suntimes.com

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