THREAD: it's time for some real talk about the Bears' QB "competition," because the number of people who actually believe Chicago's coaches are going to spend this weekend analyzing practice film before making their decision is laughably high.

The fact of the matter is that this was never a competition. The only way Trubisky was starting week 1 is if he completely blew it away this training camp. You won't find a single person who's said he had a good training camp, much less a great one.

Pretty much the only reason anybody has for Trubisky starting is that he's the incumbent, and the Bears have a bunch invested in him, so if it's a tie (which is the nicest you can frame training camp for Trubisky, based on those who attended), he gets it by default.

One problem: there's not a single coach on this staff who has anything invested in Trubisky. The only offensive coach left from when he was hired is Dave Ragone. The Tribune published last November that Ragone wanted Watson in the 2017 draft. https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/bears/ct-chicago-bears-mitch-trubisky-2017-nfl-draft-20191112-mkiclk4l4jb3bndxf7azbtdw6m-story.html

Given that Ragone was still Trubisky's QB coach at the time, I 100% guarantee that he ok'd that being published. Notice it's not "according to sources." It's stated as a fact. So safe to say Ragone is out on Trubisky.

Bears knew that and still promoted Ragone this offseason.

The fact is that Chicago's coaches all have far more invested in Foles. They were all around when the Bears traded for Foles, and presumably had input in that decision. If they convince a GM to trade for a player and give him $20M+ guaranteed, they want to see that player succeed

The only person with the Bears who has anything invested in Trubisky at this point is Ryan Pace. But this offseason he declined Trubisky's 5th year option and traded a 4th round pick to give Foles $24M guaranteed.

Find me an NFL GM who pays that price for somebody who isn't a lock to start. You won't find him, because he doesn't exist.

At this point, Trubisky is on a 1 year, $4M deal while Foles has 3 years and $24M fully guaranteed. Which one do Bears have more invested in?

So that's why this competition was always tilted heavily towards Foles. The only shot Trubisky had at starting was to be great in camp.

Again, you won't find a single person who watched practices who will argue he was anywhere close to that.

That's why I'm so confident the Bears will officially announce that Nick Foles as the starter next week. But in reality, this decision has already been made for a few weeks.

In fact, I'd wager a guess that Foles was the clear-cut #1 in practice already yesterday.

This is admittedly pure speculation on my part, but it caught my eye when Nagy called Tuesday's practice - when Trubisky worked with the 1s all day - average, then followed it up by saying Wednesday's practice was fabulous and had great energy.

Why would the energy change drastically in one day? I dunno, maybe the coaches told the team the QB competition was over and they had their guy to rally around. That could certainly excite players, especially after most of this roster watched Trubisky tank their 2019 season.

The coaches also know that Foles needs as many reps as possible with the guys he'll be playing with in games since he came in cold turkey 2 weeks ago without ever even meeting most of those players in person before.

So if you've made up your mind (which I'm 100% convinced they have), you might as well make the move now.

Thus I'm guessing Foles is already anointed as the starter in practice, but even if that's not the case, I'm confident the coaches already know he's starting week 1.