Kyle Long made his debut as a radio talk show host this past week on ESPN 1000. Long was a rock star co-host to David Kaplan on Kap and Company. He removed himself from the Bears locker room and gave unbiased takes, all while not ripping his former team apart. Even though he was delicate when critiquing his former teammates, he still revealed some information on what really went wrong with the Bears in 2019 — Trubisky’s growth, or lack of growth, will be the biggest topic all offseason long. David Kaplan asked almost every NFL guest their thoughts on Trubisky and the Bears offensive struggles, but Kyle’s brother, Chris Long, had the most insight on the subject at hand.

When it came to Trubisky, Chris said what a lot of people already know. Trubisky isn’t a special player. He then went on to say how he and his brother, Kyle, also aren’t special players and how very few are. Kyle Long supports his former QB. He said that the Bears can win with Trubisky because 2018 already revealed they can. Kyle also explored quarterbacks that could land in Chicago, such as Andy Dalton. As previously mentioned, he was a rock star and gave unbiased, professional takes.

While Kyle and Chris were discussing Trubisky, they reminisced about a conversation they had following the Bears playoff loss to the Eagles in January of 2019. “If we beat you guys, could we have made a run? You said, ‘no shot, you guys weren’t physical enough.’ And I can attest to that because when we went out there it was like playing up against the varsity team in terms of pace, and physicality,” said Kyle.

“Yea we had a physical group and I just thought like, ya know the type of runs you guys used, I didn’t feel like it played to your strengths. Like you had some physical players, again, I’m not taking away from the toughness or physicality of the players but, scheme matters,” Chris replied.

Any NFL team that lacks physicality gets exposed. Bears fans saw that this year. How many screens were blown up before they started? How many times did you see running backs met at the line of scrimmage? By no means am I calling any of these players soft. Chris Long echoed something I have been preaching for a while. Matt Nagy has not methodically tailored his system around his personnel’s strengths. The Bears offensive line isn’t drastically different in terms of personnel than they were in 2017. The only area in which Dow Loggins’ offense was successful at was running the ball. Nagy also convinced Ryan Pace that his running game would make strides if they had a running back who fit his system, but we found out that Jordan Howard wasn’t the problem and Mike Davis wasn’t the solution.

Jordan Howard ypc by year-he wasn’t the problem



2016: 5.2

2017: 4.1

2018: 3.7

2019: 4.4



How much changed on the o line? Same tackles. Whitehair and Long were both there 2017-18, but rly one guy(Daniels) is diff



Please say it’s execution instead of a bs blocking scheme. #Bears — Lucas Perfetti (@LucasPerfetti46) November 19, 2019

This isn’t a long-form defense of Mitchell Trubisky. His issues are apparent, and the Bears need to have players with more upside behind him on the depth chart as a contingency plan. All I’m saying is, the Long brothers revealed some of the deeper-seeded issues with this Chicago Bears offense. Bears fans have to hope that the hirings of tight ends coach Clancy Barone and offensive line coach Juan Castillo help instill physicality in the Bears offensive front. Both coaches have experience within the system and are old school, hard-nosed dudes.

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