What's next for QB Mitchell Trubisky? His year as Bills backup will help him decide

Four years removed from being the second overall pick in the NFL draft, Trubisky had landed in Buffalo as the backup quarterback for the Bills. His first priority was being prepared in case something were to happen to franchise quarterback Josh Allen. But from there, Trubisky also often took on the role of scout team quarterback, dedicating himself to getting the defense ready for whoever they faced that week. 

“I try to impersonate that quarterback a little bit to get the defense the best look as possible,” Trubisky said. “I'll even watch a little film on the quarterback throughout the week, just so I could really give our deep our defense a great look.”

He studied their body language, how they used their eyes, their footwork. He wanted to mimic them as closely as possible, on top of taking care of studying the opposing defense, preparing should he be needed on offense.

It’s not unheard of for a scout team quarterback to take those extra steps, but for Trubisky, who started 50 games in four years with the Chicago Bears, it was a far cry from his past.

With the Bills' season over, and Trubisky set to become an unrestricted free agent, he and the team will see how his one season in Buffalo will help determine what's next. He spent 20 weeks slipping on and off the traits of other starting quarterbacks, impersonating different QB1s again and again. He hopes to one day shed those scouting reports and step back onto the field as a starter, more confident in himself than ever before.

“I think every quarterback’s goal is to be a starter and be the best quarterback you could possibly be,” Trubisky told The News earlier this month. “So that's definitely the end goal. But right now, it's different just having tunnel vision to finish the season strong.”

The team-first attitude is a factor in General Manager Brandon Beane’s ringing endorsement.

“I’d love to have Mitchell back,” Beane said Wednesday in his end-of-season news conference.

Beane was adamant because he knew what he felt when Trubisky could have left sooner.

“For a guy that wants to play, I worried in-season if he was going to start getting the itch, like, ‘Man, I want to get out there,’ “ Beane said. “And even someone called us at the trade deadline asking about him, and I just … he was such a great fit for us, I couldn’t part with him knowing the team we had.”

Beane believes a backup quarterback is even more important accounting for Allen’s style of play. He plans to look at options in free agency and the draft, but he'd be happy to keep Trubisky. 

“If anybody calls me about Mitch on another team, I’m going to give him a great recommendation,” Beane said. “And I’ve told him and his agent, if he doesn’t get what he wants, we’ve got a spot for him.”

Some of the speculation around Trubisky’s next step is tied to Brian Daboll. The Bills offensive coordinator is headed to the New York Giants as their head coach. Daboll’s familiarity with Trubisky, along with a fraught situation at quarterback on the Giants, have MetLife Stadium as a possible landing spot. Trubisky will surely have to compete wherever he lands, but Daboll saw signs that the 27-year-old is prepared for that. 

“He's a good addition for us,” Daboll said of Trubisky earlier this month. “I think he's made strides in his game, both mentally and physically.”

Allen didn’t miss any playing time from injuries, so Trubisky played just six games in the regular season, 33 snaps total, all in garbage time. The strides Daboll has seen have had limited exposure to the other 31 teams. Any team eyeing Trubisky is going to go back to his Bears tape.

Those years were viewed as a disappointment, despite two playoff appearances and a Pro Bowl invitation. He finished his time in Chicago with 10,609 passing yards, 64 touchdowns and 37 interceptions. But he also lost his starting job in his last year, and he was always competing against the weight of expectations and the trajectory of others in his draft class.

His time there – the good and bad – might now be viewed in a different light.

Part of the journey

The Bears imploded early this season, leaving whispers of Trubisky’s name in their wake. In Week 3, rookie quarterback Justin Fields was 6-of-20, throwing for 68 yards. He was sacked nine times, bringing the Bears’ passing total to 1 yard net. Defensive end Myles Garrett, the only player selected ahead of Trubisky in 2017, accounted for 4.5 of those sacks. The Bears had 47 net yards on offense. As that game was coming to a merciful conclusion, 185 miles away, Trubisky was taking the field for the Bills, who held a 22-point lead. 

Maybe there had been more layers to the turmoil in Chicago after all. As early as September, Trubisky began to receive public apologies.

"Dear Mitchell Trubisky," ESPN's Ryan Clark said, looking straight into the camera, "I was wrong. I sat up here and said you were a bust. ... Yet sir, it was not your fault. It was Matthew Nagy's fault." 

The day after the Bears' season ended at 6-11, coach Matt Nagy and General Manager Ryan Pace were fired. 

For some people, the apologies could bring comfort, to hear public opinion swing back, to feel some sense of vindication so swiftly. If there was some solace to be found, Trubisky hadn't waited around for it.

“I don't know. I'm not sure,” he said. “It doesn't necessarily bring me peace because I'm not where I want to be yet as a player. And I just believe it was kind of just part of my journey, to where my career is gonna go. So I haven't really thought about it too much, honestly.

“But I think that's just something people realize with time. It's never exactly how it seems, right? Like there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes, that people don't know or people don't see.

“So to hear those apologies, I didn't really know what to think of it, besides it was … it was a little too late. Like it was already over for me. It's already in the past. So there’s really no point for me to think about it or stress about.”

In moving forward, it helped that he knew exactly what his role would be in Buffalo. There would be no tease of a quarterback competition, no false hope that he would usurp Allen. Trubisky arrived in Orchard Park ready to embrace a chance to reset. Still, there was some adjusting when it came time to not playing on game days, even if logically he knew he’d be sitting. He found pride in how the team did on both sides of the ball.

A team-first approach

After the 38-20 regular-season win Week 5 in Kansas City, safety Micah Hyde brought up Trubisky unprompted in the postgame news conference. Hyde was talking about how he and the defense had contained quarterback Patrick Mahomes. It stemmed from preparation.

“We felt like this week of practice, honestly, we had a really good look this week from Mitchell Trubisky,” Hyde said. “Mitch, that dude was just dropping back and running around.”

Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier never takes a devoted scout team quarterback for granted.

“You can almost feel handcuffed at times because we've had some other guys who run the scout team, have been in that role, and they don't always want to do what you ask them to do,” Frazier said. “They want to do their own thing. You have a card drawn, and you want the ball thrown to this person, they want to throw it over here. You feel like, ‘This defensive period is not your period.’

“But Mitch is not like that.”

Frazier said he saw the quarterback’s maturation most on Fridays, when the Bills run a no-huddle period, and Trubisky and the scout team went up against the defense. Watching Trubisky operate unscripted and take what the defense presented, Frazier saw growth.

“The way he comes to practice every day, you wouldn't know that he's not a starter currently in the league or the fact that he was a former starter,” Frazier said.

On any day, the defense would come up to Trubisky after practice full of questions. What were you seeing on this look? How was this disguise for me on this play? How was my coverage on this? Was I giving anything away?

“We'll have those conversations, so I could be like if they're given a disguise way too early, I'll let them know that, just so on Sunday that they're able to trick quarterbacks and be in the optimal spot to make plays,” Trubisky said.

The defense finished No. 1 in the league in yards and points allowed. The conversations helped him, too. Trubisky believes he’s learned a lot about defenses, seeing the game from a new perspective. 

The uprooting was refreshing in other ways. He found it helpful to see how another franchise operates, noting the efficiency of the way the Bills ran meetings.

On his side of the ball, he found the Bills offense allowed him to trust his own instincts more.  

“It's a lot less restricted than what I've been in in the past,” Trubisky said. “The quarterback has a lot more freedom to make checks, go where he wants with the ball, exploiting matchups and getting the optimal play for this team. So it's been a really fun offense to learn, and I feel like it's really quarterback friendly once you get it down.”

His lone touchdown of the season was one that he ran in with 4:27 left in the 40-0 victory against Houston. He came in against the Colts when the Bills were already trailing 41-15. He was picked off shortly after taking the field, on an overall dismal day for the Bills where Allen had also been intercepted twice. In the other five regular-season games he played, the Bills' point differential was 176-37. Trubisky's last snap as a Bill may have been kneeling out an otherwise perfect game on offense in the 47-17 throttling of the Patriots in the playoffs. 

He did play the bulk of one game in the preseason, fittingly on the road against Chicago. He finished 20 of 28, throwing for 221 yards and a touchdown. It was too early to be totally full circle, but he was able to soak in the cheers from his former city. 

In his new home, Trubisky quickly became close with his teammates. Allen raves about him. 

"I love the guy to death," Allen said in December. "He’s awesome, he’s an awesome teammate. Guys love him, guys gravitate towards him. So, I can see why we went out and got him, and I’m just thankful we did."

Perhaps, even outside the locker room, there was refuge in Buffalo, a franchise and a city that embraces getting back up after getting knocked down. Trubisky knows what it’s like to ascend, to fall, to have every step publicly dissected along the way. But when he talks about what he's learned after a demotion, he seems at ease. He thinks that comes from the people around him.

'Just do what you do'

When his professional life was in free fall, Trubisky found stability in his personal life. The Ohio native married his longtime girlfriend, Hillary, last July in Cleveland. The inside of his wedding suit showcased a photo of their proposal. The two are expecting a son in May. They announced the news at a luncheon filled with Bills teammates and their partners.

He lights up when he talks about that part of his offseason, excitement reverberating in voice. 

“I think just having real life experiences like that has given me perspective, and it allows you to count your blessings in other areas besides football,” he said.

It doesn't replace what he still hopes to find on the field, but rather helps him navigate everything on it. 

“You're always gonna have ups and downs throughout your career, but if you have someone you can lean on – and for me, it's my wife, she's my rock,” he said. “She motivates me and just someone I can talk to and get through things with just having that partner that you can rely on. It helps you no matter what you’re going through.”

His dad sends him the same pregame text he’s been sending since Trubisky was playing JV football at Mentor High School. For a decade now, Dave Trubisky has typed and sent, “Just do what you do” to Mitchell ahead of every single game. Even when Trubisky’s role changed, the game-day text didn’t.

Dave sent the message when his son was a backup at North Carolina, when he was setting Bears rookie records and when he was watching from the sideline in Buffalo. Trubisky hopes to one day get the text again when an an opposing player has spent the week pretending to be him. 

“You've just got to believe like deep down that everything you're working on is going to pay off eventually,” Trubisky said. “And they say the things you do in the dark will shine in the light someday when you get the opportunity. ... 

“Hopefully when I get that next opportunity I'll be able to shine.”