Chicago Bears: How Taylor Gabriel being inactive affects Trubisky

Chicago Bears WR Taylor Gabriel has been ruled out for this weekends game against the Minnesota Vikings. Coming off of a 3-touchdown game against the Washington Redskins, how will this affect Mitchell Trubisky?

Chicago Bears‘ QB Mitchell Trubisky scored his first 3 passing touchdowns of the season during their Week 3 matchup against the Washington Redskins. All 3 of those passing touchdowns came in the 2nd quarter to WR Taylor Gabriel.

This season Trubisky has targeted Allen Robinson 27 times, the most out of any of his receivers, so it came as a surprise to many Bears’ fans when we saw Taylor Gabriel score all three of those touchdowns. The chemistry everyone was hoping Mitchell Trubisky would get with all of his receivers is starting to show up between Trubisky and Gabriel.

This injury to Taylor Gabriel can affect Mitchell Trubisky in two ways, the positive way it can affect him would be Trubisky spreading the ball around to more WR’s like Anthony Miller and Javon Wims, who haven’t seen more than 5 targets each this season.

The negative way this injury can affect Trubisky would be if he goes back to only throwing the ball to Allen Robinson, which doesn’t surprise any defenses when they know who is getting the ball on every passing play.

This Taylor Gabriel injury gives the offense a chance to bring in more players including Miller and Wims but also gives a chance to let Trubisky use his legs. The Vikings defense are going to be covering Allen Robinson tight knowing that he is Mitchell’s go-to target, so that is where they can give the ball to Anthony Miller or Javon Wims or even dump it off to Tarik Cohen.

Mitchell Trubisky should be doing more plays where he rolls out to the right or to the left and passes the ball 10-15 yards down the field to get continued first downs. What works best with that also is the fact the Mitchell Trubisky can get away from defenders and break sacks, something he has shown since his very first game in the NFL.

If the play isn’t there, he can run for 5-10 yards and get out of bounce instead of being stuck in the pocket and “overthrowing” players when he is really just throwing the ball away.

Losing Taylor Gabriel this week is a big loss for this offense but it’s a manageable loss. They have other players that are just as good, they just have to get the ball out to them. The Chicago Bears cannot afford to stall out on offense and let a winnable divisional game slip from their hands like they did Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers.