Chicago Bears: Offseason’s biggest question finally answered?

That’s what it felt like. The Chicago Bears and their kicker problems seem to finally be in the rearview. Something that seemed like a far cry years ago…

It wasn’t pretty, and it very well might be the case all season, but the Chicago Bears avoid an 0-2 start to their season.

All thanks to a perfect performance by their kicker, something no one would’ve seen coming after all this time.

Well unless you’re CBS Sports’ NFL writer, John Breech:

(There is a slight hiccup in his prediction, but we’ll get to that shortly).

For the moment, let’s revel in the fact that after vetting what felt like 100 different candidates for the kicking job, the team settled on the athletic and very projectable Eddy Piñeiro. It wasn’t a pretty process, and it was watched closely all over the NFL landscape. All with good reason, as it was something the front office needed to get right since Cody Parkey’s swan song.

Even after deciding on Piñeiro, it didn’t quite seem like the team was super confident in his abilities after the 4th and 10 debacle against the Packers in the season opener.

When they called his number this time around, he delivered and validated what was a chaotic and silly competition. An MVP performance and not so much a “Most Honorable Player” performance.

Breech did say predict the ending to the game, but the first half of his prediction was “wide right”…

A win is a win and after opening night, we really shouldn’t complain after losing to Green Bay in what was a one-possession game from kickoff to final kneel down. But oh man we should really start to be concerned when Joe Flacco of all people has a better game than Mitchell Trubisky.

I get it, playing in Denver early in the season is a tough matchup, especially against a familiar friend in Vic Fangio. The Broncos’ defense was very stout yesterday afternoon. Biscuits made a major throw on the money to Allen Robinson to set up the game-winning kick, which will get overshadowed by the fact that it was set up by a bad roughing the passer penalty.

(It was very entertaining seeing everyone being #MadOnline with the call, but they had clearly missed terrible calls on Leonard Floyd and Eddie Goldman from earlier. The officiating was terrible, but that’s another topic altogether).

But Matt Nagy actually committed to running the football (David Montgomery had 18 carries, Mike Davis had three, and Tarik Cohen had four) and after giving up five sacks last against the Packers, the offensive line kept Trubisky clean.

Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis pointed out a rather stunning (and kind of hilarious) little factoid:

So what’s been the problem: the playcalling or the passer? For Sunday, “both” is an acceptable answer. With the first touchdown of the Bears’ season, there was a whopping one pass attempt (incomplete) that was wiped away from a penalty. Everything else was a run play where Cordarelle Patterson ran wild on a toss play out of the pistol for 44 yards and Montgomery ground his way for his first professional career score

Whether that’s a lack of confidence in Mitchell or Nagy trying to set up pass plays on future drives, it should be considered a noteworthy sequence. Nagy taking the ball out of Mitchell’s hands should be a sign that he wants to protect the ball and sustain drives. But at some point, you need to scheme open some receivers for some easy completions to your quarterback and build up his confidence against a strong opponent.

For Trubisky, there were passes like the one he air-mailed over Taylor Gabriel early in the game that he absolutely NEEDS to make. The team can’t rely on pounding the rock if he can’t keep teams honest on a consistent basis.

There are times through two games where Nagy gets too cute with the window dressing of his offense. It seems like his group schematically does alright with most things, but the offense as a whole isn’t dominant at one specific aspect. Kind of like a “Jack of all Trades, Master of None” scenario.

As for Trubisky, we should expect every week to be like this until he has a breakout game. Getting used to the five or six bad throws followed by the “Holy *bleep*” clutch throw is something that we need to be expecting week in, week out. Every week will be a “Show me” week; I got to see it from him in order to believe in him.

That said, we’ll take the win and bask in the fact that the Bears’ biggest offseason question mark has been solved (for the moment). But it would appear that a new one is emerging.

And this one is far more serious.