The following is the first of eight position reviews of the Bears' 2019 season.
Bears starting quarterback Mitchell Trubisky had a roller-coaster season, performing well at times but also struggling with consistency.
The second pick in the 2017 draft finished the year completing 63.2 percent of his passes for 3,138 yards with 17 touchdowns, 10 interceptions and an 83.0 passer rating that ranked 28th in the NFL.
Trubisky helped the Bears win four of five games from Nov. 10-Dec. 5 by producing 13 touchdowns (11 passing and two rushing). In back-to-back victories over the Lions and Cowboys, he threw three TD passes in both contests while posting stellar passer ratings of 118.1 and 115.5.
Trubisky and the Bears weren't as successful in their final three games. He threw only one touchdown pass and recorded ratings of 64.5 and 65.4 in losses to the Packers and Chiefs, respectively, and an 84.0 in a win over a Vikings team that rested most of its starters in anticipation of the playoffs.
"The first thing that comes to mind for me is just consistency," general manager Ryan Pace said in his end-of-season press conference. "You see moments, you see games, but for him [the issue is] stringing together better consistency. So you have peaks and valleys; we just need to flatten that out."
Those peaks and valleys were not unexpected for Pace, who sees young quarterbacks developing at different rates.
"It's never going to be a straight line, it's never going to be linear," Pace said. "There's going to be ups and downs. And you see moments this year, you see games, you see him responding to adverse situations within a game. Those are signs of positive improvement. We just need to smooth out those inconsistencies."
Trubisky's most impressive game of the season came Dec. 5 against Dallas. In a 31-24 Sunday night win at Soldier Field, he accounted for four touchdowns, passing for 244 yards and three TDs and rushing for a season-high 63 yards and one touchdown.
Yet Trubisky was part of a Bears offense that regressed across the board in 2019. The unit ranked 29th in the NFL in both scoring (17.5 points per game) and total yards (296.8) after finishing 10th in the league in scoring in 2018 (25.6 points).
At last week's press conference, Pace revealed that the Bears remain committed to Trubisky as their No. 1 quarterback in 2020, saying: "Mitch is our starter. We believe in Mitch and we believe in the progress that he's going to continue to make.
In 2019, backup quarterback Chase Daniel connected on 70.3 percent of his passes for 435 yards with three TDs, two interceptions and a 91.6 passer rating.
The 11-year NFL veteran replaced an injured Trubisky on the Bears' first possession Sept. 29 against the Vikings and capped the 14-play, 75-yard drive with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Tarik Cohen in an eventual 16-6 victory.
Making his only start of the season the following week in London, Daniel completed 22 of 30 passes for 231 yards with two touchdowns, two interceptions and an 89.7 passer rating in a 24-21 loss to the Raiders.
Daniel is due to become an unrestricted free agent in March. Bears third-string quarterback Tyler Bray is already a free agent after finishing the season on the practice squad.
