How does rookie Mitchell Trubisky stack up against his peer DeShone Kizer?
As the Chicago Bears get set to take on the Cleveland Browns, it will feature the only two rookie quarterbacks in the NFL. With almost nothing else to look forward to in this game, we did a three part breakdown to see the differences in how these two got here. Since neither has necessarily set the world on fire, the best place to look at how they have come along is sacks, incompletions, and of course, interceptions. In this edition, we are looking at interceptions.
To be honest, the first two breakdowns were pretty surprising. Kizer shows pocket poise, and his receivers sure do let him down a lot, as does left tackle Spencer Drango. Still, when it comes to interceptions, Trubisky takes a huge jump in overall quality.
To start, Kizer has 19 interceptions and Trubisky has seven. While Trubisky has 139 less attempts, even extrapolated out, he is not on pace to touch Kizer. What is even more killer for Kizer is that the majority of these are on him. Ten of his 19 interceptions would be classified as a bad throw, bad decision.
The play below is a classic example of a bad throw, bad decision. He is running backwards, throwing off of his back foot into three defenders. It is short of his target and a horrible decision at that. He gets almost all of the blame.
Having 53% of his interceptions being lumped into that category is rough. You do not where to start. 16% were also completely on Kizer as the result of bad passes as well. 21% were due to his receivers, and 5% amounted to a hail mary.
For Trubisky, he has been much more protective with the ball. When it comes to the bad decision category of his interceptions, that has only amounted to 29% of his passes. 57% were just accuracy related with 14% being blamed on the wide receivers. It is a very small sample size, but compared to the careless and poor decision of DeShone Kizer when it comes to handling the ball, it is great to see Trubisky trump him so handily in this area.
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Overall, the only real overarching lesson from this excersise is that both need time and help around them to understand if they can grow in the league. Play calling and wide receivers were an excuse far too often for both quarterbacks. While the Bears feel like they have their guy, it will be interesting to see what the Browns do with Kizer. It seems as though patience may be a smart option, which is what the Bears will be doing. If this is an instance where the Bears and Browns steer off into different directions as franchises, it is not a bad thing for the Bears, or Mitchell Trubiskys development.