off to California for a last-minute tune-up
with quarterback guru Adam Dedeaux.
He’s taking advantage of his brief stint in
town to get a haircut, which may explain
why his baseball cap stayed glued to his
head all morning at Harrison Park.
Lawrence Funk’s barbershop is a
block from the Harold Washington
Library Center in the Loop, and the space
is festooned with old-timey tonsorial
accoutrements (there are multiple bar-
ber’s poles inside the shop). “He is literally
a barber historian,” Trubisky says.
Funk marvels at the quarterback’s
curly bangs when he takes off his hat. “It’s
been a month,” Trubisky says defensively,
and he asks for his usual cut and some
minor facial hair maintenance (the beard
is staying). He sits in the main chair by
the window, and on the mirror is a decal
reading “Barber of the Chicago Bears.”
Funk travels to Halas Hall to cut many of
the players’ hair during the season, and
he st r a ig ht-r a zor shaves t he dome of head
coach Matt Nagy every week. “It’s part of
his ritual,” Trubisky says.
Nagy, a puckish offensive swami, led
the Bears to a division title during his
first year as a head coach and helped
Trubisky grow into his role under cen-
ter. “Last season was the most fun I’ve
ever had in my life,” Trubisky says. The
Bears went 12–4, and Trubisky enjoyed,
by every definable metric, one of the
finest seasons in the history of Chicago
Bears quarterbacking, becoming the
first at that position since Jim McMahon
to make the Pro Bowl (albeit as an injury
replacement). Whether this says more
about the franchise or the player is
another matter.
Still, as thrilling as it was, last sea-
son will largely be remembered for
how it ended. “I answer that question
a lot: ‘How’d you feel after that kick?’ ”hope is genuine when it’s there — and
with Trubisky it’s there — but a 34-year
championship drought is enough to drive
some to the point of speaking in Green
Bay–loving tongues.
In the car Trubisky ref lects on his
nearly disastrous incompletion, which
led to a trembling lip from the boy but
no tears. “I don’t want to hurt the kids,”
he says. “I won’t even be mad if they
dropped it. Just don’t take it to the face
or anything.”
It could have been worse. Three
weeks earlier, Trubisky held his own
football camp in Lake Forest, and a par-
ticipant broke his arm diving for one of
his passes. “He landed the wrong way.
Freak accident.” The next day, the boy
came back and asked Trubisky to sign
his cast. “He was a trooper.”
“ Am I traumatized by it?” Trubisky says
of how last season ended. “Absolutely not.
Am I motivated? For sure.”
Clockwise from left: At a Nike event
for kids in Pilsen in July; arriving
at Soldier Field as Mike Ditka for a
game before Halloween last year (“I
wouldn’t call it a costume. I’d say I
dressed like a legend,” he said at
the time); with coach Matt Nagy.HILE THERE ARE ONLY 16
games during the NFL’s
regular season, being a quar-
terback is a year-round job.
It’s kind of like being the lone
physician in a small town
in this regard, and Trubisky assumed
his duties after roughly three decades
of medical malpractice by his prede-
cessors. Bears training camp is less
than two weeks away at this point, and
Trubisky, a northeast Ohio native, is back
in Chicago for just one day before he jets