76 CHICAGO | SEPTEMBER 2019
He is a neat freak to the extreme.
The man actually folds his dirty laundry.
“I’m kind of OCD,” he says.
Trubisky says. “You can pretty much
answer it yourself: Not. Good.”
Had Cody Parkey’s attempt hit the
crossbar at a more favorable angle,
the story of the game would have been
T r ubisk y ’s t wo clutch pa sses t hat moved
the Bears 33 yards in 38 seconds. Instead,
the “double-doink” has been entered as a
case study in the Chicago Sports DSM-5 for
eternity. “They’ll always be talking about
that,” Trubisky says. “Am I traumatized
by it? Absolutely not. Am I motivated?
For sure.”
That’s a silver lining for Bears fans,
whose relationship with Trubisky got
off to a rough start. The team went all in
on the quarterback during the 2017 NFL
draft, trading two third-round picks and a
fou r t h-round pick just to move up a sing le
spot and select him second overall. It was
a bold move — one that was questioned by
many pundits — to get a player who’d only
started a single season at the University
of North Carolina and it added pressure to
what is already one of the more stressful
gigs in America. “I really got a taste of it
the day after I got drafted,” Trubisky says.
“I went to a Bulls game, and I got booed.”
Put yourself in his position. It was
the first day he had ever stepped foot in
Chicago. A video clip of his draft walkup
plays on the United Center’s Jumbotron,
and the crowd lets him have it. Well-
meaning acquaintances later told him
that his new neighbors were actually
razzing the sight of NFL commissioner
Roger Goodell and that they didn’t realize
Trubisky was in the building, but it was
a formative memory nonetheless. “It was
pretty eye-opening.”
Trubisky showed f lashes of talent
his first season, but John Fox, who was
head coach at the time, had limited trust
in his rookie quarterback. “Everyone
looks at numbers, and I only threw seven
touchdowns,” Trubisky says. “I mean, I
threw seven interceptions to match that,
but there was a lot of growth.”
In Trubisky’s second season, Nagy
introduced intricate schemes that chal-
lenged his young quarterback. His
offense relied on movement and timing
to confuse defenses, allowing receivers
to pop open. It was Trubisky’s job to find
them — and adjust when his first option
was covered. The Bears’ offense hummed
when he was able to make those quick
decisions and stumbled when he wasn’t.
Trubisky’s favorite pass from last
season is a prime example of the for-
mer. It came in the 14th game, against
the Packers, when he hit tight end Trey
Burton on a corner route in the fourth
quarter for a touchdown and the lead. “I
feel like I ripped that one. I just threw
it so decisively,” he says. “We knew we
were going to win after that.” The victory
clinched the Bears’ first NFC North title
in eight years.
Cody Whitehair has had a front-row
seat to all of this. He has been the Bears’
center throughout Trubisky’s tenure
(he’s moving to left guard this season)
and has seen him become more self-
assured. “He’s done a great job on the
field of seeing things,” Whitehair tells
me. “He’s able to read things just a little
bit quicker. That helps his confidence. He
can trust in everything he’s learned to
just go out there and play ball.”
Unlike last year, when the team’s suc-
cess surprised everyone, expectations
are high this season. And a lot of that
hangs on the arm of Trubisky, who turned
25 du r ing t r a in ing ca mp. He is embr acing
the situation. “I’m still a kid who dreamed
to be in this position. I’m very intense and
passionate about what I do.”
This off-season he studied game tape
to better understand the ways opponentsdefended him, like the Patriots forcing
him to make plays to his left. And he threw
passes almost daily, including on vacation
in Florida, where he found a field to work
out on while there with the family of his
girlfriend, Hillary Gallagher, a Florida
State marketing student. “If there’s no
place to throw, I’m not going. Last week
I was throwing back at my high school.”
Trubisky’s hometown of Mentor (the
way Mitch pronounces it, it rhymes with
“tenner”) is the kind of place where they
sell the high school team’s gear at the
local Foot Locker. Being the quarterback
there is, in Trubisky’s words, “a big deal,”
and he’s quick to note that he was one of
only two players in the school’s history
to be named Ohio Mr. Football. He was
a ball boy for the high school team when
he was young, and his earliest football
memories are of watching the older guys
play on Friday nights. “I just remember
the details, like how they wore their
gloves. Or how they tucked their jerseys
into their shoulder pads to make them
look tighter.” You’ll notice that Trubisky
still tucks his sleeves into his pads, and
given his build, the nostalgic homage
makes him look less like a quarterback
and more like a middle linebacker. At the
barbershop, a man getting his hair cut
wonders aloud how Trubisky would fair
in a mixed martial arts fight.
Trubisky may not be a finished prod-
uct yet, but his improved second year
eased fans’ doubts. He now leans into
the city’s endless reverence for a par-
ticular season in Bear history. When he
sat with Jim McMahon at a Bears cen-
tennial event in June, the Super Bowl
champ gave him a Punky QB–esque
headband and shades, and Trubisky
wore them both for the duration of his
appearance. Last October, he donned a
Mike Ditka vest and aviators on his way
into Soldier Field before a game. It was
Trubisky’s idea, and the video of his
entrance set an engagement record on
the Bears’ Instagram page. “That was
the most fire clip that we ever posted,”
Cameron Good, the team’s former social
media producer, tells me.