Chicago Bears: Four stats that support why Mitchell Trubisky could still breakout

No. 4: Recent success for QBs in big contract years

As it relates to the future of the Chicago Bears, May 4 will be one of the more interesting pre-September days on the calendar. Decision time is coming for the Chicago Bears, as they consider whether or not to pick up Trubisky’s expensive $24.8 million fifth-year option.

Chicago’s been largely noncommittal to a simple yes-or-no, but there are risks involved. Say Trubisky outplays Foles, and has a resurgent upcoming season. The Bears would be able to check Trubisky’s contract issue off the books, and still cut their ties with him, so long as he’s healthy.

If they don’t extend him, and he produces in 2021, the bill to keep him would exceed that $24.8 million price tag. So, Trubisky isn’t in say, a traditional contract year like most, but there’s big money on the line, as well as his future. And history suggests that isn’t maybe the worst situation to be in.

This past season, a number of the NFL’s most coveted passers — Teddy Bridgewater, Dak Prescott, and Ryan Tannehill — put themselves in position for big contracts with all the cards on the table. One could even put Jameis Winston in this category. He had eye-popping numbers, but took a pay cut in order to learn and grow as a player in New Orleans.

The “contract year phenomenon” has been a cause of division among the NFL world. In 2015, ESPN’s Christopher Harris suggested through a study that player’s primary motivations likely weren’t money, and there was no correlation.

Earlier this year, the University of the South in Tennessee conducted a similar study, concluding that “quarterbacks prove to have a spike in play right before they get paid, and a decline in performance after they get paid.”

This past year, the quarterback free-agent market may as well have taken place at a bingo hall, given all of the grey-haired, old quarterbacks (Brees, Brady and Rivers). As it relates to recent signal-callers facing the fifth-year phenomenon, the success rate has been reassuring.

Trubisky is, predictably, the odd man out among first-round quarterbacks from his draft class to not have his fifth-round option accepted already (Watson and Mahomes each took care of theirs over the last two days). But here are some facts:

Dating back to the 2012 NFL Draft, there have been 17 quarterbacks eligible for the fifth-year option, and a reassuringly 12 of them got it. The only ones to not receive it: Johnny Manziel, Teddy Bridgewater, E.J. Manuel, Christian Ponder, and Jake Locker. (Paxton Lynch was cut before his came about, and Brandon Weeden was ineligible).

The relief of getting that signed has correlated to some of those quarterbacks’ best seasons.

— Blake Bortles, a convenient comparison to Trubisky, produced the only winning season of his career after the fifth-year option, nearly making the Super Bowl. And he, like Trubisky, was 25, and entering year four.

— Cam Newton won the league’s Most Valuable Player and made it to the Super Bowl.

— Blaine Gabbert had the best season of his career, while the rest of the quarterbacks were roughly the same, and only Andrew Luck had his worst.

So, it evens out like a bag of Halloween candy. Mostly good stuff, but some of those weird butterscotch ones from 1986 scattered about, too. This isn’t to say that Trubisky will range from one extreme to the next, but most trends suggest this is the time to find that groove. And for his sake, he’d better.

And if not, we can always blame Cody Parkey.