By Nick Wojton / Billswire.usatoday.com
The Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears are in vastly different spots in the standings. One’s in first, one’s in last.
But where the two are similar is at the quarterback position. Both teams have top-10 drafted quarterbacks that many questioned their draft spot.
In 2017, Mitchell Trubisky was selected by the Bears (4-3) No. 2 overall. This past year, the Bills (2-6) took Allen No. 7. In both instances, the two teams traded up to take their guy.
By no means is Trubisky at the top of the NFL’s quarterback power rankings. By no means is he Pat Mahomes, who so far is the best QB in the 2017 draft class. But one thing is far to say: he’s improved since his rookie year. Looking into Sean McDermott’s process crystal ball, he’ll envision some improvement in Allen moving forward as well.
“I think (Trubisky) has developed, obviously, in the way he’s playing, but also just freshman to sophomore year, if you will, rookie to second year in the league, naturally there should be some development there,” McDermott said. “These guys go through so much from their combine training to their first year. There’s not a whole lot of time for some other areas that you really want to develop until they get to their first offseason where you can kind of take a deep breath, assess where you are and make those, what you hope are those significant improvements.”
In his rookie year, Trubisky started 12 games and went 4-8, completing only 59.4 percent of passes with 7 touchdowns and 7 interceptions. Allen is currently sidelined with an elbow strain, but he has a 2-3 record with a 54 percent completion percentage with two scores and five picks.
This year, Trubisky’s completion percent has jumped to 64.6 percent while his TD-to-INT ration jumped to 15-6.
Chicago head coach Matt Nagy is a big reason why. Along with his current gig, he’s considered one of the NFL’s top QB coaches. With his experience, Nagy dished his thoughts to reporters via conference call this week.
“When you’re dealing with our guys, Mitch and Josh, it’s a little bit of a slower process (than with Mahomes),” Nagy said per the Buffalo News. “You’ve just got to be willing to accept those (ups and downs) and try to make the highs bigger than the lows.”
Nagy admitted there’s certainly different ways to develop a quarterback. Mahomes sat his entire rookie season while Trubisky and Allen played. There’s All-Pro players who’ve done both. What remains to be seen is if the Bills have the developmental program in place to groom Allen.
Currently Buffalo has David Culley as their quarterbacks coach. He’s primarily spent his career as a wide receivers coach. Offensive coordinator Brian Daboll hasn’t spent much time directly involved with QB development in his career, however, he did spend time in New England, working on an offense with Tom Brady.
The Bills will get a front-row seat with Trubisky this week. They might want to take notes on the talent around him on and off the field.