Rozner: Trubisky's best chance is no QB controversy
Mitch Trubisky doesn't have much to live up to now.
All he has to do in order to properly fulfill expectations set for him by Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace and paying customers - excited about an exhibition performance against reserves - is win the Super Bowl this year.
That seems entirely fair.
The reality is Trubisky has to be good or everyone gets fired, but it doesn't have to happen the first month of his first season, or even during his first season.
But he does have to be good at some point.
Trubisky obviously has skills, and he displayed them Thursday night under the best possible circumstances, but it might be something less than proof that he's headed for the next 10 Pro Bowls.
It's also worth remembering that he started just 13 games in college and the Bears are bad, so maybe give the kid a break, maybe give him 15 or 20 minutes in the NFL before a Super Bowl is required.
It is, after all, the same reception given every Connor Shaw who has come through these parts in the past 50 or so years.
Even better was the greeting Jay Cutler received when he threw a single pass at Soldier Field in an exhibition game after arriving from Denver.
Screaming. That's the memory. Screaming.
Screaming fans, screaming media, screaming headlines.
Screaming.
The greatest of all time. Hall of Famer. Start buying your Super Bowl tickets now.
And Cutler, the best quarterback in Bears history, wasn't offered a bus ticket on his way out of town earlier this year.
He was simply told to leave.
Quickly.
It doesn't help Trubisky that Mike Glennon looked like a Cleveland castoff in his first appearance as a Bears QB, and before Pace gets the genius label - again - it should be noted that he's the one who handed Glennon $18 million of the McCaskey family fortune.
If there is already a quarterback controversy - and the Bears insist there isn't - it would suggest that Pace wrote a big check for no reason.
That doesn't smell like the stuff of genius.
"Our depth chart is not going to change after one game, in particular after a preseason game," said head coach John Fox. "You have to look at a lot of different things."
Trubisky will have to play eventually, and yet the best chance for him to succeed long term would be Glennon playing well enough to keep the job most of this season - so that it's Glennon running for his life and taking those hits instead of the team's newest hero.
And to Trubisky's credit, he has said all the right things to this point, coached well on how to handle being anointed as a franchise savior, and how to be a good teammate to Glennon even though he wants the job and knows it's going to be handed to him at some point regardless of how anyone performs.
"Mike's the starter," Trubisky said. "It's his team."
The quarterback conversation did manage to avert eyes from the miserable performance by the first team offense against a strong Denver defense, looking more like the Marx Brothers than the Bruise Brothers. It was a reminder of how much work needs to be done in August if the Bears intend to look respectable in September.
Hope is a good thing, and Trubisky offered that to a desperate fan base, exhausted by one terrible McCaskey mistake after another the past 30 years.
Still, it's an exhibition game, occupied mostly by players who won't be on an active roster come Sept. 10.
Let's absolutely overreact to that.
brozner@dailyherald.com
• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.