Matt Nagy seemed to indicate Saturday that he wasn't going to announce the winner of the Bears' starting quarterback competition before the team's season opener a week from Sunday in Detroit.
But the Bears coach clarified those comments Monday, saying on a video call with reporters that he does plan to reveal whether Mitchell Trubisky or Nick Foles will start against the Lions sometime next week.
"What I meant, to keep it real simple, was that there was not going to be a quarterback named this week that we're in right now," Nagy said. "So I apologize if I made that gray. But there will be no waiting until the middle of the week or the end of the week for that to happen. That wouldn't be fair to our team and it wouldn't be fair to the quarterbacks."
Nagy declined to specify which day the highly-anticipated announcement will come, but he conceded it likely would be Monday or Wednesday.
"Honestly, we don't know that," Nagy said. "But it would be in that timeframe in there somewhere. You will know by the time most teams usually know. We're not hiding anything. We're going through, for us, this whole process and we don't even know that yet to be quite honest. So we're talking through those situations and what's best and how to go about it. So we're just really honestly not there yet."
Ready to roll: With the entire preseason cancelled due to COVID-19, rookies weren't able to gain valuable game experience in advance of the regular season. Nevertheless, Nagy feels that second-round pick Jaylon Johnson, a cornerback from Utah, is prepared to step on the field a week from Sunday in Detroit.
"I feel like he's ready," Nagy said. "You can see his confidence that he has. You have to have short-term memory in this league. He's got extreme confidence.
"And it's not cocky. It's confidence. I like that about him. He's got a ways to go. He hasn't played an NFL game. We'll see. But in practice so far, I like where he's at."
One indication that Johnson is ready to play at the NFL level came last week in practice when he intercepted a Nick Foles pass.
"That was a veteran move that [Johnson] made on that play," Nagy said. "A lot of rookies, at that point in time, play it a little bit differently. Without giving out too much stuff on the play, that was all instincts. That play he made was all instincts. As a matter of fact, Foles asked after the play, 'How did you know that that play was coming?' He said it was just instincts. Nick was surprised because he thought maybe his defensive coaches were scouting the play, telling him to fall off and make that pick. It was all instincts."
Next men up: Since starting running back David Montgomery suffered a groin injury last week in practice, Nagy has been impressed with how the Bears' other backs have picked up the slack.
The group includes Tarik Cohen, Ryan Nall, Cordarrelle Patterson and undrafted rookies Artavis Pierce and Napoleon Maxwell.
"We like where we're at," Nagy said. "Obviously, we like it more when David is in there. But these guys I think have really taken on their role and what we're trying to do in that room. We wanted to make sure that for different reasons last year, we needed to improve our run game. They knew that. The offensive line, coach [Juan] Castillo, [assistant offensive line coach] Donny Raiola, [running backs] coach [Charles] London, they're really focused on working together. Hopefully, we can get that thing going this year."
