I love seeing the Chicago Bears’ Sackwatch trend down while seeing Andrew’s Rush Report trending upwards. Mitchell Trubisky is tied with L.A.’s Jared Goff with taking 17 sacks, which is 18th in the league. If we’re talking sack percentage, Trubisky’s 6.1 is 14th in the NFL. As a rookie in 2017, his sack percentage was a robust 8.6, so it’s evident that he’s settled down as a passer, and the predictability of the offense has helped that percentage drop as well.
Here’s how the sacks allowed has looked with the last few offensive coordinators/play callers.
Sackwatch after 8 games
2010 - 32 Martz
2011 - 21 Martz
2012 - 28 Tice
2013 - 12 Trestman
2014 - 20 Trestman
2015 - 14 Gase
2016 - 14 Loggains
2017 - 19 Loggains
2018 - 17 Nagy
The last few years under head coach Lovie Smith were brutal at protecting the quarterback.
Now let’s look at the lone sack allowed in this weeks...
Sack 17 - First Quarter 10:54 - Julian Stanford
These types of sacks annoy me. It was third and five from the Buffalo 32, and all Trubisky had to do was chuck the ball out of bounds to prevent the loss in yardage. If he does that, head coach Matt Nagy probably elects to let Cody Parkey try a 49 yard field, but with the sack they were forced to punt it away. At that point in the game the score was 0-0, so points would have been nice.
Bears left tackle Charles Leno Jr. does a good job initially, but then he allows defensive end Jerry Hughes (#55) to get underneath him, which causes Leno to lunge. That gets him off balance and Hughes breaks free to pursue Trubisky.
Trubisky does a nice job in evading the pressure from Hughes, but he wasn’t able to gather himself for a throw as he ran towards the sideline. He does miss an open Anthony Miller late, who worked back to the ball, but that was because he was looking towards the middle of the field. I have a feeling when they went over that play in the film room that the confident Miller pointed out that he was wide open, and that he’ll always get open in the scramble drill.
I can’t let Leno completely off the hook for allowing the initial pressure, but Trubisky get’s half of this sack allowed too for not getting rid of the ball before Julian Stanford cleaned it up.
Individual Sackwatch through 8 games:
Mitchell Trubisky - 5
Sacks Happen - 5
Kyle Long - 2
Bobby Massie - 2
Charles Leno Jr. - 2
Dion Sims - .5
Eric Kush - .5