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After weeks of speculation about a Russell Wilson trade, the Chicago Bears finally made their move for a new starting QB on Tuesday, signing Andy Dalton to a one-year deal.
Exciting, huh?
Anyway, while this deal doesn't move a lot of needles, but it's still a quarterback change on an NFL team, so there are a good bit of things to talk about surrounding this deal, so let's talk about those things.
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So, What's Andy Dalton Got Left?
We could bemoan the fact here that the Bears are heading into 2021 without a long-term starting quarterback (unless they draft someone), but instead let's just try to focus on Andy Dalton.
The former Bengals quarterback signed in Dallas last year to be the backup for Dak Prescott, but an injury forced Dalton into the starting role. In that role, he was...fine?
Or at least, 2020 was an improvement over 2019, with Dalton posting nice increases in completion percentage and touchdown percentage. His interception rate dropped a little, but his QB rating went up, as did his ANY/A.
Of course, Dalton wasn't playing as well as did earlier in his career. His 4.2 touchdown rate in 2020 was lower than five of his Bengals seasons.
Dalton played for a Cowboys team that ranked first in pass plays per game, but he was just 28th among quarterbacks in yards per attempt. His lack of air yards was a big part of that, as his 6.6 air yards per attempt ranked 33rd. He was 26th in accuracy rating. 30th in fantasy points per dropback.
The point of all those numbers is that Dalton wasn't very good last year, with volume being the biggest reason why he was serviceable at times. His efficiency numbers show him to be barely an NFL starter at this stage in his career, and that was with a really good supporting cast in Dallas. He won't have as much help in Chicago. Dalton's a low-end QB2 at best.
Does This Help Anyone In Chicago?
Yes, I think?
Dalton's upside isn't super high, but he did have a higher accuracy rating than Mitch Trubisky last year, as well as slightly higher true completion percentage.
The move from Dalton to Trubisky is a move that takes you from an inconsistent quarterback who can lose you games to a slightly less inconsistent quarterback who can actively not lose you games. That's a presence that can help out the Bears and their passing attack.
Last season, Allen Robinson caught 102 passes for 1,250 yards and six touchdowns, with about half that production coming from Trubisky and the other half from Nick Foles. Some consistency -- even if that consistency is from Andy Dalton -- is probably going to, at the very least, not hurt Allen Robinson?
I don't know. I'm looking for positives here, but there's not a ton of them. We can argue that Dalton doesn't hurt the Bears vs. where their skill position players were at last season, but Robinson is really the only pass-catcher here who seems like a lock to actually be fantasy relevant.
There is one player we should address here though: Cole Kmet.
People love Cole Kmet. Should they love him with Dalton throwing the ball? That's complicated. Last year, the Cowboys had the seventh-lowest percentage of targets to tight ends. In Dalton's last full 16-game season with the Bengals in 2017, Cincy had the eighth-lowest percentage of targets to tight ends. Even in 2015 when Tyler Eifert was the closest he's ever been to healthy, playing 13 games and finishing as the TE6, the Bengals threw to tight ends just 18.5 percent of the time, which was the eighth-lowest again.
Basically, Dalton doesn't have a track record of heavily targeting his tight ends, but Eifert had a great year even with that issue. And last season, the Packers were in the bottom half of the league in targets to tight ends but had a great fantasy one because he found the end zone, so you don't necessarily need to have a ton of targets to the position for there to be fantasy relevance.
Kmet's value is still going to be about him putting his talent all together and having a breakout campaign based on optimizing the targets that he gets. He's still a TE2 with upside.
Russell Wilson Is Staying In Seattle Now, Right?
Yeah, Wilson's staying in Seattle. Maybe this trade talk picks back up in 2022, but the four places that were on Wilson's trade list have either made QB deals this offseason or have been pretty firm about their commitment to Derek Carr. The Bears reportedly made a big offer for Wilson, but Seattle chose to hold onto their star.
We'll revisit this next year maybe, since Dalton is on a one-year deal.
What About Mitch Trubisky?
The Bears are heading into draft season with Nick Foles on the roster as the presumed backup QB, which leaves Mitch Trubisky on the outside looking in.
Entering his fifth NFL season, the former No. 2 overall pick has shown enough to justify a roster spot somewhere. He's a fairly mobile guy who completed a career-high 67 percent of his passes at season. He had the fifth-best play-action completion percentage and third-best pressured completion percentage in the league, but continues to struggle to make routine plays. If he can clean up those kinds of errors, he still has the physical profile of an NFL starter.
But we've reached the point where you have to wonder if it's possible for Trubisky to clean up those issues. He can have flashes of potential for as long as teams keep trotting him out, but if he can't show some consistency, he'll eventually stop seeing the field. We could already be at that point, especially considering the lack of available starting jobs.
I assume Trubisky's 2021 offseason ends up looking like Dalton's 2020 offseason in that he takes a deal as a backup somewhere to try to improve his future stock. It (sort-of) worked for Dalton, so maybe it will work for Trubisky too.
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