The Chicago Bears aren’t going to win many games in 2017, no matter who is starting under center. Through four games, one thing that’s abundantly clear is that Mike Glennon isn’t a viable bridge as the franchise moves on from the Jay Cutler era to the impending Mitchell Trubisky era. That bridge is already under crumbling under duress.
During Thursday night’s game at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers, Glennon turned the ball over four times. He threw two awful interceptions and lost two fumbles holding onto the ball too long whilst doing his statue routine in the pocket. Three of those turnovers directly led to touchdowns by the Packers, which was good enough for the home team to win the game.
Through four games, Glennon has thrown five interceptions (all in his last three games) and has fumbled the ball five times. For those who may not be aware, that’s … not good.
Head coach John Fox isn’t ruling out a quarterback change but wouldn’t go so far as to make the bold move to bench Glennon in favor of the rookie.
“We need to make a lot of changes,” Fox said, via Jeff Dickerson of ESPN.com. “We will evaluate everything, and we’ve got a lot of work to do before we line up against Minnesota on [Oct. 9]. We are going to look at everything.”
If we’re honest, Trubisky should have gotten a chance at some garbage-time snaps on Thursday night. The game was out of hand in the third quarter when Chicago missed a field goal and the Packers turned around and made it a 21-score game with a touchdown-scoring drive.
But we all know Fox is conservative to a fault. Everyone watching could see Glennon was not going to bring the Bears back. It was the perfect opportunity to let the rookie get some experience. But Fox wasn’t moved to action. With that in mind nobody should be surprised if Glennon is once again the man under center when the Bears take on the Minnesota Vikings.
That said, Glennon shouldn’t play another down in 2017 unless it’s in an emergency setting. Like what we’re seeing in Cleveland and Houston, Trubisky needs to be playing. Whether he’s going to win many games is irrelevant. He’s clearly the best option the Bears have at their disposal — it was evident during the preseason and Glennon has done nothing since then to disprove the notion.
The offense features a dynamic running game that can help protect the young quarterback, even if the team’s receiving corps is a hot mess. The one thing we know Trubisky will do better than Glennon is avoid pressure. He possesses excellent athleticism and can run to make plays as well as he can throw.
The Bears are at least a year or two away from being a competitive team in the NFC. If they are going to roll with Trubisky going forward (given the draft capital they spent to land him, they will) then the best thing the organization can do for him and itself is get him involved right now. Let him take his lumps and learn on the fly.
Right now, continuing to let Glennon play is just pure stubbornness, and it isn’t going to help anyone.