Bears Offense Caught in Downward Spiral Regardless of QB

Mitchell Trubisky appears he'll be past a hip-pointer enough to play Sunday but what does it matter when the the offense is ranked 30th overall and at passing the ball?

The question of whether Mitchell Trubisky was actually injured and not benched seems to have been answered Thursday again by backup quarterback Chase Daniel.

If only the Bears offense could be as well polished as their response to this pseudo PR crisis.

Some doubts Monday surfaced over the validity of the Bears' description of Trubisky's hip-pointer. It was based largely on whether Daniel actually had even been warming up on the sideline after the alleged injury.

Even if in a roundabout fashion, Daniel on Thursday said he was prepared to go into the game.

"Listen, I'm always prepared," Daniel said when asked if he warmed up and was ready to play in the late fourth quarter when he went in. "I'm always trying to stay loose." 

Daniel said he had been getting ready since the injury happened in the second quarter.

"I could sense, I sort of saw when the hit happened," Daniel said. "And so I started getting a little bit more loose, stretching a little bit more on the sideline, throwing a little bit more.

"And so I was not surprised when I went in."

To the Bears, the injury to Trubisky was obvious even if it wasn't to the national TV audience or even reporters in the press box.

"I mean, it got to a point where it was pretty bad," Daniel said. "We knew at halftime he was not feeling his best. I mean, he gutted it out.

"You saw it the first drive coming out of the half we were rolling, scored a touchdown obviously, a big third-and-10 red zone conversion touchdown to Tarik (Cohen). Yeah, it just tightened up on him. You play a 3 1/2-hour game and it's bound to happen."

Actually, the game was played in a snappy 2 hours, 52 minutes because the Rams passed only 18 times, but point taken.

The so-called "Hip-Pointer-Gate" controversy aside, Trubisky has gone through full practices Wednesday and Thursday and there appears to be no question he'll be able to face the New York Giants Sunday at Soldier Field.

So the Bears have to figure what to do with their offense and their healed quarterback, who now is apparently improving with his play by the day according to coach Matt Nagy.

"I think he's played better in a broad generalization," offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich said. "There are specific things obviously that everybody's trying to improve upon. Had some drops that didn't help. Didn't finish drives the way we wanted to." 

And yet, they're still 30th on offense, 30th in passing and 29th at running the ball.

The Bears are second in the league now in dropped passes with 18 after leading for a few weeks. They're 28th in scoring at 16.9 points a game.

"There’s zero questioning the criticism that's out there on what;s going on with our offense. There's zero of that," Nagy admitted. "We understand that. And we all are very frustrated and know that we can play a lot better. That's the hard part.

"When you really dig down deep, especially after you see what happened last year and the way we played last year with a lot of the similar guys, that part is certainly challenging. But there's a silver lining. I don't know where it is, I don't. But there is one."

The interesting part is how Nagy knows this. He went through it all before in Kansas City, and wrote it down in his diary ... or journal ... or journal that was actually more of a diary.

"I was going through my journal the other day and I forgot that we went through a little losing streak that last year in Kansas City for me, but we rallied back from it," Nagy said. "There's a lot of different examples out there.

"It's how you handle it (tough times)."

This should be a very silvery lining for the Bears, indeed.

Twitter@BearsOnMaven