5 signs of growth from Mitch Trubisky

Mitch Trubisky has been playing better football

The Mitchell Trubisky debate has heated up and got more interesting by the week. This is an account that wrote to pump the brakes when it comes to giving Trubisky a big-money extension and admitting he is their quarterback moving forward.

However, even you believe Trubisky is not the long term answer, you have to admit that the last month has been some of the best, most consistent football of his NFL career. It is easy to brush off the defenses they have faced, but there is tangible growth shown from Mitch Trubisky.

Below are five areas where you can tell Trubisky has improved.

Improved Accuracy

One of the bigger issues with Mitch Trubisky is that his mechanics are not consistent, and it turns every pass into an adventure. He has far too many bad and missed throws to be relied on. However, while the defenses he has faced helps, his accuracy has improved, and that has to be credited to Trubisky.

For his career, Trubisky has an 18.7% bad throw rate. In the Detroit, Houston and Minnesota games, Trubisky had a bad throw rate of 12%. Those three games were top 15 in terms of lack of bad throws. For what it is worth, Trubisky is 13-2 when he has a bad throw rate under 15%, and one of those losses was this year against the Lions.

This goes beyond bad throw rate, though. This is every pass. Completion Percentage over Expectation (CPOE) uses player tracking data to determine the likelihood of completion. For his career, before week 8, Trubisky had a (-2.8) CPOE which means 2.8% of passes that are expected to be completed are not by Trubisky. This is another sign of poor accuracy.

This also shows in a (-2.3) CPOE in 2019, as well as (-4) in the first three games of the year. Fortunately, Trubisky has shown growth, and in the past month has a 2.3 CPOE.

The number of bad throws he makes is going down and the number of good throws he makes are going up.