Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky wanted to see exactly how his teammates viewed him in terms of his facial expressions and body language during a game.
So at the urging of coach Matt Nagy, the third-year pro watched a TV copy of last Sunday's loss to the Chargers and saw a serious and tense quarterback that he hardly recognized. On Wednesday, Trubisky told reporters he intends to have more fun playing the game he loves.
"There are so many things that go into playing this position," Nagy said. "And when things aren't going your way, for all of us, when it's a struggle, sometimes you think that you're portraying something or your reflection is something different than probably what it is.
"We just talked about, 'Let's have no music on. Let's have no background noise. Let's not listen to what they're saying on the TV copy and let's just watch the game. Let's check it out. Let's see what your emotions look like. What do your teammates see? What do your coaches see? What does everybody else see?' And then come away from that and be honest and say, 'Is that what we want?'
"I'm not going to get a whole lot into our conversation, but the one thing that I think he said to [reporters] yesterday was that he felt different than what he portrayed to everybody else and to his teammates, and so he wants to have more fun. Well, that comes with success and that comes with us as a unit winning. I think it was good for him. I don't know exactly what it'll do for all of us or what it'll do for him, but I thought personally it was good."
Nagy and Trubisky watched the TV copy of the Chargers game without the sound on.
"It's about shutting it down and just not listening to anybody," Nagy said. "Let's just look at the physical side of it. Let's look at how you look. How do you look? What happens is when you start listening to what other people are saying, it takes away from what the objective is of doing that which is trying to watch what you look like."
While it doesn't apply to every player on a 53-man roster, the way a starting quarterback comports himself is key to a team's success.
"The third-string guard is watching you in the weight room," said offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich. "There's no 'off' position on the quarterback switch. Somebody is watching. Right now, somebody is watching you do something. You might be eating, and somebody is watching you, going, 'Oh, OK. That's how he eats.' That's who you are to your team and your teammates."
Trubisky wants to have more fun, but that's easier said than done when a player and his team are not performing up to expectations.
"He's a young kid that hasn't had a whole lot of experiences of knowing how to handle certain situations," Nagy said. "He's a 25-year-old kid that has a lot of things right now going at him.
"He wants to win badly. When you don't win or you feel like you don't play as well as you want to, and there's other exterior things that go on, it's hard. It can weigh you down. We want to figure out how do we get away from all that, and how do we get back to all the fun. And well, that's by playing a little more loose. It's by winning. And I think that's all of us included. So that's kind of the goal."
