Mitch Trubisky should NOT have thrown it to Trey Burton!

One screen shot broke Twitter and the Mitch Trubisky bashing began. But it never should have happened.

If you are active on Bears’ Twitter, you know all about “the screen shot.” It may go down in social media lore at this point. If you aren’t up to speed, here you go.

After the Bears lost to the Green Bay Packers in painful fashion on national television, plenty of armchair quarterbacks starting going after Mitch Trubisky. Some of the criticism was fair, after all, Trubisky didn’t look great with the game on the line while Aaron Rodgers was otherworldly.

As the criticism continued on the national scale, the local media also starting jumping in with their takes on Trubisky’s performance.

That’s when The Athletic’s Dan Durkin jumped into the conversation with this screenshot:

The screenshot looks awful for Trubisky. There’s no doubt about it. It looks like he’s looking right at him and it doesn’t seem like anyone is near Burton. But the photo is deceiving. When you watch the play in real-time, the moment he was that open was actually a minuscule amount of time.

As the screen grab starting gaining momentum, Kevin King of the Green Bay Packers even chimed in.

It’s not too often you see a rival come to the defense of the other team’s quarterback! King is referring to Ha Ha Clinton-Dix who you can see reading the play in the upper left corner. Dix is making his break back towards Burton, and King feels he would have had a bead on the ball if Trubisky threw it.

The counter points didn’t stop there, former NFL QB Dan Orlovsky also chimed in.

The counterpoints didn’t stop there. Plenty disagreed with Durkin’s assessment of the play. But on Thursday, Matt Nagy and Trubisky met with the media and even they responded to the screen grab.

First of all, big kudos to Mitch Trubisky for that type of answer. That answer is an honest assessment of the game situation, the play itself, and himself as a quarterback. But that’s the bottom line on the play.

This play is a screen pass to Taylor Gabriel on the left. That’s the design. That’s not a quick read by Trubisky where he looks and can quickly go to Burton. The play happens so quickly, that Trubisky would have had to read Burton at the snap of the ball to make that throw and ignore his primary read completely.

In that situation, there’s zero chance he’s doing that. Screens take a moment to develop, the fact of the matter is that it’s not reasonable to say that Trubisky missed that play. After the screen pass developed questionably, Trubisky looks for his next option which you see in Trubisky’s direction of vision, but at that point if he throws it, its way too late to get the ball to Burton before that window slams shut.

Trubisky made plenty of mistakes on Sunday night, but one of them was not missing Burton on that play. Anyone who tries to argue the fact, is just spewing incorrect facts and should be ignored.