Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy and GM Ryan Pace announced on Friday that the team’s starting quarterback spot is officially up for grabs. Initial reports said the Bears brought Nick Foles in to help Mitch Trubisky mature into an efficient starting quarterback, but it seems now they’re going to let the two duke it out for the starting spot.
“We’ve increased competition at a critical position, and we talked to both players, and the way we view this is it’s an open competition,” Pace said. “And credit to both those guys for embracing it.”
“What’s important, and what you are going to find out in this process, is it’s going to be real simple — it’s going to very transparent and very honest,” Nagy said. “What I thought was really neat was when we talked to Mitch, which speaks to who he is. You could feel how much of a competitor (he is), and you know it, and you see it.
“He’s a competitor. He understands that all he wants to do is be the best quarterback he can be for the Chicago Bears, and that’s what he’s going to do as we move on here.”
“A talented player and the fact that he’s played in some big games and performed well in those big games and that carries a lot of weight,” Pace said of Foles. “Then you have a lot of people in our building that are comfortable with him as a person and his makeup, which made the decision easier. That all kind of came together to make him a target for us and someone we wanted to aggressively go get.”
New Face
The Bears traded their fourth-round draft pick in exchange for Foles and bought his $21 million contract as well. The former Super Bowl MVP says he’s excited to be headed to Chicago and willing to do what’s best for the team.
“My career has been an interesting curve,” Foles said on a conference call Friday. “It’s been all over the place.
“It will be an open competition. I just want to go in there and do what’s best for the team,” Foles added. “Obviously, Mitch has been there for several years and knows this offense really well — the Chicago version. I’ll be competing, but it’ll be a healthy competition. Mitch and I have already talked, and we want to start out on the right foot because ultimately, it’s about the Chicago Bears and not about the ego of the quarterbacks.”
Nagy and Foles are fairly familiar with each other, as Nagy coached Foles in Philadelphia and Kansas City.
Trubisky underwent surgery on his labrum in his left shoulder in January and is rumored ready to go. Trubisky has struggled in recent years as the Bears QB, despite being one of the “best grabs” in the NFL Draft years back.
