The Bears moved onto Sunday's game in Denver at the beginning of the week. But quarterback Mitchell Trubisky conceded that it wasn't easy—not after the offense failed to score a touchdown in last Thursday night's 10-3 season-opening loss to the Packers.
"It was a long weird weekend after playing on Thursday and then just sitting on that for a couple days," Trubisky said Wednesday. "You think about it a lot and see what went wrong. But we're positive around here. It's a positive culture. We're onto the next play and onto the next game.
"All the mistakes we made, they're all fixable. We're going to come in here, come in with solutions, come in with a positive work attitude, and go to work and make sure we're bouncing around at practice today and fixing our mistakes and moving onto the next game."
Two fixable mistakes the offense will work on this week in practice are getting in and out of the huddle quicker and improving communication. Deficiencies in those two areas against the Packers resulted in "everybody not being on the same page," according to Trubisky.
"I think we need to just tighten down," said the Bears quarterback. "Everybody focus in a little more, a little more sense of urgency in and out of the huddles, better communication on the sidelines and in the huddle so we have more time to operate at the line of scrimmage. And then just playing fast. So less thinking, more communicating and playing fast."
The Bears will attempt to make those corrections against a Broncos defense that yielded three touchdowns and 357 yards in a 24-16 Week 1 loss to the Raiders Monday night in Oakland. Denver's head coach is Vic Fangio, who spent the past four seasons as Bears defensive coordinator and—as a result—is very familiar with Trubisky and the offense he operates.
"We've got to mix it up a little bit," Trubisky said. "We've got to do some things that he won't expect and just try to keep him off balance. I think if all 11 guys on our offense are doing our jobs, then the game's going to go the way that we want it. We want to dictate the tempo, how they're reacting to us and just do things that he won't expect, necessarily. And we've got to do some things that he hasn't seen before. He's a great defensive mind and we have a lot of respect for that. But we've got a job to do and we've got to make sure we do our job on offense."
In helping the Bears win the NFC North championship with a 12-4 record last season, Fangio coordinated a defense that led the NFL in points per game (17.7), takeaways (36), interceptions (27), interception return touchdowns (5), opponent passer rating (72.9) and rushing yards per game (80.0). Three of his players were selected first-team All-Pro—outside linebacker Khalil Mack, safety Eddie Jackson and cornerback Kyle Fuller —and a fourth in defensive tackle Akiem Hicks was named to the Pro Bowl.
"Vic does a good job calling games and he's really good with predictability; knowing what your tendencies are and knowing what you're bringing—and putting guys in the right spot," Trubisky said. "He does a good job of making it complicated for the quarterback to see, as far as holding the coverage and stuff. But he keeps it simple for his guys, so they're able to play fast and be in the right spot and make plays."
Against the Packers, Trubisky completed 26 of 45 passes for 228 yards with one interception and a 62.1 passer rating. And while the offense was pretty much out of sync from start to finish, the quarterback is confident that the unit is on the right track.
"The ball felt great coming out of my hand," Trubisky said. "I felt like I was seeing the defense well. On a lot of those plays it's just really close and we had some really simple things that went wrong. Some of it just flat-out bad luck, some of it bad communication, some of it, it's just a game of inches. We just missed by inches.
"You have a couple plays early on in the game that maybe went our way and we might be looking at a whole different ballgame. But that's not how football is, that's not how life is. Sometimes the ball doesn't bounce your way. But you've just got to bounce back and that's what we're trying to do [this] week."
