Rozner: Not exactly Super start for Bears, Trubisky

For a team that is supposed to go very far this year, the Bears went into the opener Thursday night against Green Bay with some very big questions.

They did not find the answers they were looking for at Soldier Field.

No need was greater than knowing whether Mitch Trubisky could discover elite status, and whether Matt Nagy had enough trust in his third-year quarterback to open up the offense.

Ironic, isn't it, that Nagy was criticized after the Bears' playoff loss to the Eagles for being too conservative, the same label John Fox received and was hammered for weekly the year before?

Both had reason to be, given the evidence, knowing that Trubisky wasn't to be trusted.

Now he must be if the Bears are to make that Super Bowl run everyone in Chicago is anticipating.

But Thursday night's loss to Green Bay looked very much like the 2018 version of Trubisky - or 2017, for that matter - thus far not exactly the superstar the Bears have promised over and over again.

Trubisky was having trouble seeing the field when he wasn't looking for Allen Robinson, and he wasn't setting his feet, resulting in wobbly overthrows and several underthrows that could have been intercepted.

So Nagy had no choice but to play it safe, looking for short throws his QB could make, and the screens on third-and-long that went nowhere brought only boos from a crowd that was charged up when it arrived and very quiet when it departed.

As advertised, the Packers' defense was much improved from a year ago, but the Bears' offense was not.

It's only one game - the Bears lost the opener last year before winning 12 games - but this was intended to be the big coming out party for Air Nagy and the vaunted weapons we've been hearing about for months.

"Right now we're really happy, excited about our offense," Nagy said a few days ago. "We're in a phenomenal spot right now. I love where we're at."

It's been quite the honeymoon for Nagy and his GM, Ryan Pace, but the free pass may end this year in the fifth season of a lengthy rebuild if the Bears don't make a serious run at the title.

Back in June, Nagy was trying to lower expectations when he said, "I know there's a buzz right now around who we are and I get it.

"But we haven't done anything and this is a new year. There are plenty of examples of teams that have had really good years and then come back and for whatever reason they don't (have good years).

"That's my job. I have to make sure that complacency (isn't a problem). We're no longer 12-5. We're 0-0 and we have to go 1-0."

But Nagy abandoned the preseason, choosing to keep his starters off the field, and believed his offense was Super Bowl ready.

As for starting 1-0, the Bears were facing a Green Bay squad that also didn't show anything in the preseason, though it's worth remembering that after a quiet camp a year ago the Bears looked exhausted in the second half of Game 1 in 2018 while blowing a 20-point lead to an injured Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay.

And though Rodgers hadn't thrown a touchdown pass in Chicago since 2015, the theory in Green Bay was that, minus Mike McCarthy holding back the Packers' offense, and with an improved defense, it wasn't going to be easy for the Bears to get that 1-0 start Nagy was dreaming of all summer.

It was not.

In a fitting tribute to 100 years of Bears football, the defense was superb again and the offense was abysmal.

Then again, progress doesn't happen overnight.