Former first-round draft pick Mitch Trubisky is heading into his sixth NFL season since being selected second overall by the Chicago Bears in 2017. The former Tarheels quarterback is also moving onto his third team, signing a two-year contract last week with the Pittsburgh Steelers that is worth up to $27 million.
He will also be working with his fifth different offensive coordinator in Matt Canada when he gets to Pittsburgh, and he believes that experience that he has been through requiring him to learn new offenses repeatedly will benefit him, telling Mike Prisuta for the team’s website that he’s “definitely gonna draw on my past experiences in Chicago and Buffalo and use them here to help the Steelers”.
“When you change coordinator, you learn new offenses, and I think each time you learn a new offense, it gets easier and easier, because you’re able to pick things up and you learn techniques on how to study and how to memorize the plays and the formations”, he said.
Trubisky was drafted under head coach John Fox in 2017, with Dowell Loggains at the time serving as offensive coordinator, his second season in that role since being promoted from quarterbacks coach (prior to that, he spent nearly a decade with the Tennessee Titans).
Trubisky began that season behind veteran Mike Glennon, who was benched after four games. He himself would go 4-8 as a starter through the final 12 games, and Fox would be fired after the end of the season.
Chicago then hired Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy, who hired former Oregon Ducks head coach Mark Helfrich to be his offensive coordinator, though he retained the play-calling responsibilities. Nagy replaced him with Bill Lazor, coming over from the Cincinnati Bengals, in 2020. That’s three coordinators, plus a separate play-caller, in four seasons with the Bears.
During his time with the Buffalo Bills last season, Trubisky learned behind Josh Allen working with offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and quarterbacks coach Ken Dorsey, the two of whom he gives a lot of credit for expanding his horizons about offensive play.
Now he’s coming to Pittsburgh, and he will be the first quarterback around whom Canada will actually get to build and fully implement his offense, after heavily accommodating the preferences of former quarterback and future Hall of Famer Ben Roethlisberger.
“I think each time I’ve learned a new offense, I’ve picked it up quicker and quicker, so I’m looking forward to getting with Coach Canada and learning this offense and diving in right away so when we get into OTAs, we can hit the ground running”, Trubisky told Prisuta.
He will ostensibly be battling Mason Rudolph for the starting quarterback position, however, and while he may have ample experience learning new offenses, Rudolph has spent his entire career in Pittsburgh. He will have to make great use of his ability to be a quick study, though he should not want for practice reps, under the circumstances.
