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By Mark Lazerus Dec 5, 2019
As Jerry Jones brushed past him — sweeping through the visitors’ locker room at Soldier Field with a throng of reporters trailing in his wake, breathlessly waiting to hear if Jones would fire Jason Garrett on the spot and leave him on the tarmac at O’Hare — Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith smiled.
“Everybody wants the boss,” he said.
Smith was calm as could be in the aftermath of the Bears’ 31-24 victory over the Cowboys — a flattering score for a putrid Dallas performance — as he went through what he called his “routine.” The white pants, the colorful sneakers, the dress shirt, the already-tied tie, the gold watch, the snazzy glasses. It all went on in an apparently particular order. All that was left was the white, real-fur coat that had fallen off its hanger.
Then, a brief moment of panic.
“Where’s my other phone?”
Smith dumped open his suitcase, toiletries tumbling onto the floor. He stood on his tippy toes to sweep the top shelf of the locker stall with his right hand, one phone already in his left hand. Then he tossed his coat into the other stall before — whew — he found his second phone underneath a few papers on the bench.
That was the most frustration he was going to show. If Smith were angry — embarrassed, even — with how the 29th-ranked offense and the 24th-ranked quarterback in the league had toyed with the 6-7 Cowboys, he wasn’t showing it. He professed his “love” for Garrett. He insisted the team was still “all in.” And while he sure as hell saw room for improvement, he didn’t see a need for panic.
“Well, the beautiful thing about it is, we’re first in the division,” Smith said, smiling. “Any other division right now, (we’d) probably be chalking it up. But for us, by the grace of God, we’ve been given life.”
Just across the way, maybe 8 or 10 feet in front of his stall in the narrow locker room, defensive end Robert Quinn wasn’t handling things nearly as well. He was hunched over, too perplexed by what had just happened to get dressed, instead just repeatedly rubbing his head with his hands.
Mitch Trubisky, perhaps the most maligned quarterback in the league, had just torched the Cowboys to the tune of 244 yards passing and three touchdowns, and 63 yards rushing and one touchdown. He bounced back immediately from a classic “Oh, Mitch” interception on the Bears’ opening drive — rolling out to his left, seeing nobody was open, and firing an ill-advised laser over Javon Wims’ head that was picked off by Jourdan Lewis inside the 1-yard line — with a nearly perfect outing the rest of the way.
He threw tight spirals into tighter windows. He kept the Cowboys on their heels with his scrambling ability, despite rushing for just 80 yards in his first 11 games. He protected the football. And he never let Dallas back in the game. The Not Ready For Primetime Player had a 60.4 rating in five night games at Soldier Field. On this night, he had a 115.5.
Yes, that Mitch Trubisky. And Quinn struggled to wrap his mind around it. His body spoke more than his voice — he shrugged exactly nine times in the first minute of our conversation — as he sputtered through a futile attempt at an explanation, punctuating nearly every thought with a sad chuckle.
“I’m still a little shocked,” he said. “They put up 31 points. I don’t know. Uh, man, uh, I’m just a little shocked, as you can see by my response. I mean, not that they — yeah, I don’t know.”
Another sad chuckle.
Why shocked, I asked, leading the witness.
“Uh, I don’t think anyone saw this coming, I’ll tell you that,” Quinn said, with yet another sad chuckle. “I don’t think anyone saw this.”
Why shocked, repeated another reporter who had just entered the fray.
“Well, like he said, they’ve been having a struggling offense,” Quinn said. “And even then, we created two turnovers on defense. And they still put up 31. It’s like, pshhhh, you’re just kind of puzzled sometimes.”
The Cowboys had no excuses, no explanations. Nobody on the Dallas side was surprised by the return of Mitch the mad scrambler, and the way it enabled Matt Nagy to open up his offense and get his 2018 groove back a bit. Even though he hadn’t shown it all year, Trubisky did put up 421 rushing yards last season. And as Quinn pointed out, the league has been overrun by mobile quarterbacks, listing Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Trubisky and his own Dak Prescott as examples. Just last week, Buffalo’s Allen had 43 rushing yards and a touchdown in a 26-15 win in Dallas.
No, the Cowboys weren’t surprised that Trubisky ran. They were just surprised how easy they made it for him.
“We knew that was in their offense,” Lewis said. “We didn’t know how much he was going to do it because of his (previously injured left) shoulder, but at the same time, we knew this was a team that can do that. And they saw on film that they can get us, and they took advantage of it.”
“It’s just an extra challenge playing defense when you have a mobile quarterback, but it’s no excuse,” Quinn said. “We all got jobs, responsibilities. We just need to handle them better.”
Another sad chuckle.
Smith didn’t try to take anything away from the reawakened Bears offense, but he saw that gaudy 31 on the scoreboard as more the Cowboys’ fault than the Bears’ doing. He cited mental errors. He said guys were “trying to do too much.” Some early mistakes snowballed one way for the Cowboys, and the corresponding momentum snowballed the other way for the Bears. Simple as that.
“It’s mental,” Smith said. “It’s mental. We know what type of team we have. We’ve got to decide what we want to do. For me, I’m all in. And I know my brothers are all in. We’ve got to collectively do it together.”
Trubisky might have been a punch line for much of the football world this season, but he still gets some respect among defenders. Asked what he thought of Trubisky as a quarterback, Smith used the highest term of endearment that his counterparts on the Bears use.
“He’s a guy that’s a dog,” Smith said. “He’s going to battle. We knew that going into it, and he had the upper hand tonight.”
Despite the stats, despite the airmailed throws, despite the trouble spotting open receivers downfield? Really?
“Yeah, wasn’t he a top-10 pick?” Smith asked. “I mean, that’s what you get. That’s what you get. But we have guys, too. And we didn’t get the job done tonight.”
Trubisky did. Allen Robinson and Anthony Miller and whoever the heck J.P. Holtz is did, too. So did the offensive line. And Nagy.
As a result, by the grace of the football gods, the Bears have some life, too.
“Thirty-one-points,” Quinn muttered, more to himself than to anybody, before yet another sad chuckle. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
As Jerry Jones brushed past him — sweeping through the visitors’ locker room at Soldier Field with a throng of reporters trailing in his wake, breathlessly waiting to hear if Jones would fire Jason Garrett on the spot and leave him on the tarmac at O’Hare — Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith smiled.
“Everybody wants the boss,” he said.
Smith was calm as could be in the aftermath of the Bears’ 31-24 victory over the Cowboys — a flattering score for a putrid Dallas performance — as he went through what he called his “routine.” The white pants, the colorful sneakers, the dress shirt, the already-tied tie, the gold watch, the snazzy glasses. It all went on in an apparently particular order. All that was left was the white, real-fur coat that had fallen off its hanger.
Then, a brief moment of panic.
“Where’s my other phone?”
Smith dumped open his suitcase, toiletries tumbling onto the floor. He stood on his tippy toes to sweep the top shelf of the locker stall with his right hand, one phone already in his left hand. Then he tossed his coat into the other stall before — whew — he found his second phone underneath a few papers on the bench.
That was the most frustration he was going to show. If Smith were angry — embarrassed, even — with how the 29th-ranked offense and the 24th-ranked quarterback in the league had toyed with the 6-7 Cowboys, he wasn’t showing it. He professed his “love” for Garrett. He insisted the team was still “all in.” And while he sure as hell saw room for improvement, he didn’t see a need for panic.
“Well, the beautiful thing about it is, we’re first in the division,” Smith said, smiling. “Any other division right now, (we’d) probably be chalking it up. But for us, by the grace of God, we’ve been given life.”
Just across the way, maybe 8 or 10 feet in front of his stall in the narrow locker room, defensive end Robert Quinn wasn’t handling things nearly as well. He was hunched over, too perplexed by what had just happened to get dressed, instead just repeatedly rubbing his head with his hands.
Mitch Trubisky, perhaps the most maligned quarterback in the league, had just torched the Cowboys to the tune of 244 yards passing and three touchdowns, and 63 yards rushing and one touchdown. He bounced back immediately from a classic “Oh, Mitch” interception on the Bears’ opening drive — rolling out to his left, seeing nobody was open, and firing an ill-advised laser over Javon Wims’ head that was picked off by Jourdan Lewis inside the 1-yard line — with a nearly perfect outing the rest of the way.
He threw tight spirals into tighter windows. He kept the Cowboys on their heels with his scrambling ability, despite rushing for just 80 yards in his first 11 games. He protected the football. And he never let Dallas back in the game. The Not Ready For Primetime Player had a 60.4 rating in five night games at Soldier Field. On this night, he had a 115.5.
Yes, that Mitch Trubisky. And Quinn struggled to wrap his mind around it. His body spoke more than his voice — he shrugged exactly nine times in the first minute of our conversation — as he sputtered through a futile attempt at an explanation, punctuating nearly every thought with a sad chuckle.
“I’m still a little shocked,” he said. “They put up 31 points. I don’t know. Uh, man, uh, I’m just a little shocked, as you can see by my response. I mean, not that they — yeah, I don’t know.”
Another sad chuckle.
Why shocked, I asked, leading the witness.
“Uh, I don’t think anyone saw this coming, I’ll tell you that,” Quinn said, with yet another sad chuckle. “I don’t think anyone saw this.”
Why shocked, repeated another reporter who had just entered the fray.
“Well, like he said, they’ve been having a struggling offense,” Quinn said. “And even then, we created two turnovers on defense. And they still put up 31. It’s like, pshhhh, you’re just kind of puzzled sometimes.”
The Cowboys had no excuses, no explanations. Nobody on the Dallas side was surprised by the return of Mitch the mad scrambler, and the way it enabled Matt Nagy to open up his offense and get his 2018 groove back a bit. Even though he hadn’t shown it all year, Trubisky did put up 421 rushing yards last season. And as Quinn pointed out, the league has been overrun by mobile quarterbacks, listing Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Trubisky and his own Dak Prescott as examples. Just last week, Buffalo’s Allen had 43 rushing yards and a touchdown in a 26-15 win in Dallas.
No, the Cowboys weren’t surprised that Trubisky ran. They were just surprised how easy they made it for him.
“We knew that was in their offense,” Lewis said. “We didn’t know how much he was going to do it because of his (previously injured left) shoulder, but at the same time, we knew this was a team that can do that. And they saw on film that they can get us, and they took advantage of it.”
“It’s just an extra challenge playing defense when you have a mobile quarterback, but it’s no excuse,” Quinn said. “We all got jobs, responsibilities. We just need to handle them better.”
Another sad chuckle.
Smith didn’t try to take anything away from the reawakened Bears offense, but he saw that gaudy 31 on the scoreboard as more the Cowboys’ fault than the Bears’ doing. He cited mental errors. He said guys were “trying to do too much.” Some early mistakes snowballed one way for the Cowboys, and the corresponding momentum snowballed the other way for the Bears. Simple as that.
“It’s mental,” Smith said. “It’s mental. We know what type of team we have. We’ve got to decide what we want to do. For me, I’m all in. And I know my brothers are all in. We’ve got to collectively do it together.”
Trubisky might have been a punch line for much of the football world this season, but he still gets some respect among defenders. Asked what he thought of Trubisky as a quarterback, Smith used the highest term of endearment that his counterparts on the Bears use.
“He’s a guy that’s a dog,” Smith said. “He’s going to battle. We knew that going into it, and he had the upper hand tonight.”
Despite the stats, despite the airmailed throws, despite the trouble spotting open receivers downfield? Really?
“Yeah, wasn’t he a top-10 pick?” Smith asked. “I mean, that’s what you get. That’s what you get. But we have guys, too. And we didn’t get the job done tonight.”
Trubisky did. Allen Robinson and Anthony Miller and whoever the heck J.P. Holtz is did, too. So did the offensive line. And Nagy.
As a result, by the grace of the football gods, the Bears have some life, too.
“Thirty-one-points,” Quinn muttered, more to himself than to anybody, before yet another sad chuckle. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
