Bears 'improved' with Andy Dalton, but coach Matt Nagy is 'indebted' to Mitchell Trubisky

The Chicago Bears missed out on trading for disgruntled Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and settled for signing former Cincinnati Bengals starter Andy Dalton via a one-year, $10 million "prove it" contract. 

Dalton said last month he joined the Bears because he was told he'll begin training camp sessions as their QB1, and general manager Ryan Pace echoed that notion on Friday. Per Chris Emma of 670 The Score, Bears coach Matt Nagy offered a fond farewell to former starter Mitchell Trubisky, who signed with the Buffalo Bills shortly after the start of the new NFL year, when speaking with reporters on Friday. 

"I’m indebted to Mitch and what he’s done for so many different reasons," Nagy explained. "It’s hard to go through these processes. I care so much about him. It didn’t work out here.

"For different reasons, it didn’t work out. But I certainly appreciate the way that he handled everything."

Pace, meanwhile, had high praise for his new signal-caller. 

"That's one of the areas of our team where we feel like we're improving," Pace said of replacing Trubisky with Dalton on the depth chart. "Andy fits our style of offense. When you go through it with our scouts and coaches, he can handle the drop-back game, he can handle the RPOs, the play-actions, the movements. We just felt as we went through those free-agent quarterbacks, he’s one of the more complete quarterbacks we evaluated this year in free agency and we’re excited to have him." 

Both Pace and Nagy likely need this latest experiment to work to keep their jobs beyond the 2021 season.