How Mitchell Trubisky could change the Chicago Bears offense

3. Options/Designed Runs (within reason) can work

Now, don’t angrily flood my comments section over this.

I’m NOT advocating that the Chicago Bears run Trubisky frequently in the NFL. That would apply even if he were the second coming of Cam Newton. Smashing into angry NFL defenders just isn’t something the Bears want for their franchise quarterback doing regularly.

Plus, he’s shown that he occasionally needs protection from himself as he tries too hard to make plays.

However, in small doses, utilizing an athletic quarterback’s ability to run the football can give defenses fits.

As far as the read option goes, the beauty of a lot of NFL offenses is that they pick and choose their spots to use it. And when they do, it tends to be decently effective.

Heck, Adam Gase even had Jay Cutler running it on Sunday.

Just imagine having Trubisky running zone reads with Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen. Or, rewatch the Dallas Cowboys’ win over Arizona two Mondays and see Dak Prescott torturing defenses with the threat of Ezekiel Elliott before taking off around the edge. That should give you a glimpse.

And if the Bears want to threaten defenses outside the tackles, maybe they could play with this once or twice. Put Cohen on his side and force defenders to make a choice.

Furthermore, if teams want to play Cover 0 or 1 in the red zone, what about busting this out?

Again, the Bears won’t want to run draw plays frequently against big, fast NFL defenses. If you make that too much of an offensive focal point, Trubisky will eventually go home in pieces.

But if you lull defenses to sleep and pull it out once in a blue moon, designed quarterback runs in short-yardage situations can be effective. And, by keeping them infrequent, perhaps you also minimize some risk to the prized young quarterback.

Next: Pros and cons of starting Mitchell Trubisky

Again, basically anything the Chicago Bears decide they want to run will likely work that much better now with Trubisky running the show. And chances are that they won’t run anything particularly exciting in his first week as a starter. The game plan will stay fairly simple and tailored to his strengths: lots of moving pockets and quick reads.

But when/if the Chicago Bears are ready to open their minds to the possibilities of what Trubisky can do, they’ll have some intriguing options to consider.