Mitch Trubisky’s 2nd-half challenge: Jell with Bears’ WRs on the fly

Dontrelle Inman spent the last six days before the Bears broke for their bye Wednesday trying to catch as many balls from rookie Mitch Trubisky as he could — before, during and after practice.

“Just trying to develop the chemistry and the trust,” he said.

There’s no shortcut to it.

“Just throwing,” Trubisky said. “We’re already working in practice and after practice. We need to continue to rep those routes, and it’ll come.”

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It won’t happen during the bye. Coach John Fox said Trubisky and Inman spent this week working together, but “we’re not going to have them out there doing three-a-days over their rejuvenation period.”

When Trubisky returns from his bye-week trip home to Ohio, he’ll find only two wide receivers — Kendall Wright and Josh Bellamy — who have played for the Bears all season long.

The others:

• Inman, who’ll make his Bears debut in Week 10 against the Packers.

“He’s got a big frame, and he runs really good routes, so he’s a guy to throw to,” Trubisky said. “He’s very ball-savvy, so [we’ll] just continue to rep that chemistry along with the other guys, and we’re going to continue to get better.”

• Tre McBride, whose three catches for 92 yards Sunday accounted for the Bears’ best receiving game all year. The Bears claimed him at the end of the preseason and cut him once during the regular season.

“Rapport is built with reps,” McBride said. “On the field, in pads, that’s when that time is built. And we only get so many days to do that.”

• Tanner Gentry, who has three catches for 35 yards in 182 offensive snaps. The Bears cut and re-signed him this season.

• And Markus Wheaton, who missed most of the preseason with appendicitis and a broken finger. He caught one regular-season pass, then hurt his groin.

Developing chemistry on the fly is a tough task even for a veteran quarterback.

“There’s no substitute for the experience — time on task, 100 percent,” backup quarterback Mark Sanchez said. “That’ll come as the season goes on. That’ll come in the offseason, him working with guys and him developing chemistry with those guys.

“But at certain points, you look at guys that have been together a long time, and you just start to feel their body language and understand what their cuts look like. . . . Obviously, time’s of the essence.”

This week, Trubisky and the Bears watched every pass play this season. The verdict: He completed more passes on play-actions and rollouts than dropbacks.

“When my feet are right and my eyes are right,” he said, “I’m on the money.”

Another small detail in the examination of his four-game stint: He must be better in what he called the “two-minute trifecta” — making an effective play to start a late drive, avoiding plays for loss and getting one good chunk of yards.

“He has that innate ability of always wanting to know why and get better,” quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone said. “It’s great for me as a coach to have a player like that.”

Perhaps the biggest bonus of Trubisky’s second half is that it won’t be as unfamiliar as the first.

“What you have to understand is, every one of those plays is an experience,” Fox said. “And a guy like him or a guy in his position, as well, they’re going to learn from those experiences.

“And there’s nothing like it — you can practice all you want, you can go virtual reality, but there’s nothing like real life. So those are real-life experiences for him, and I think he’s handled it very well, and he’ll continue to get better for it.”

Follow me on Twitter @patrickfinley.

Email: pfinley@suntimes.com