Everyone knows you can’t win a quarterback competition on Zoom. That didn’t stop Mitch Trubisky from trying.

The Bears have been saying all offseason a battle for the starting job will not commence until the team gets on the field and Trubisky, speaking to media members Friday for the first time since the Dec. 29 season finale against the Vikings in Minnesota, was candid and introspective in assessing how his world has changed more than five months later.

Trubisky, who likely is facing an uphill battle to emerge as the starter, was polished and didn’t seem shaken by the turn of events that have altered his standing with the Bears: trading for Nick Foles, who is guaranteed $21 million, and then declining the fifth-year option for 2021 in Trubisky’s contract.

Trubisky was just enough defiant and just enough motivated to justify the characterization coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace made that he’s in a good spot. It’s going to come down to how Trubisky plays, and to that end, he believes he has an advantage over Foles in a competition that has been shortened by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Because it’s a small sample size, I think that advantage goes to me just because I’ve been the starter here the last two years, these are my guys, my teammates and guys I’ve built super strong relationships with over the last two years,” Trubisky said.

Trubisky was speaking from the office of his north suburban home. On the wall over his right shoulder was a frame of a portion of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizen in a Republic” speech, delivered in 1910 in Paris.

In the speech, Roosevelt called for “self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution — these are the qualities which mark a masterful people.”

Trubisky, 25, owned up to his shortcomings in a disastrous season for the Bears offense and has been credited by teammates for taking the lead in organizing unofficial installation practices for offensive skill position players.

He came across as self-aware and, more than anything, driven.

When asked what was most frustrating about last season, Trubisky first said health. He suffered a torn labrum in his left shoulder in Week 4 but missed only one game. He’s on target to be fully cleared before training camp.

“We’ve just got to be more detailed,” he said. “We’ve got to be more locked in to our game plans week-in, week-out. Everybody’s got to be on the same page, and when we get to Sunday, it’s got to all be about execution. I felt like we lacked details overall on offense, myself included, especially. If we’re on top of those this year and we just hold each other accountable to the standard we know we’re capable of, then we’ll have a lot more success and win more games.

“We definitely have the talent. It just comes down to being disciplined, playing smart football and everybody doing their jobs to perfection. Those are two of the main focuses that I came away with looking at last year.”

Among some of the pointed criticisms Nagy had of Trubisky the day after the season were that he wanted the quarterback to improve significantly at reading defenses and coverage.

That has led the 2017 No. 2 pick to spend the offseason reviewing every pass from the last two seasons.

What coverage was the defense playing? What coverage did he see on the field at the time? Where did Nagy want the ball to go? Where did the ball ultimately wind up?

Besides throwing passes against air — without defenders in the informal workouts — that’s all Trubisky can do as he prepares to try to win the job entering his fourth season.

“My plan is just to go out there and earn my next contract, wherever that is,” he said. “I want it to be here in Chicago. I’m going to play my heart and soul out for this team and give it everything I’ve got. I am just excited to get back on the field with my teammates and get back to work.

“But it wasn’t a huge surprise (Foles was acquired). It was more fuel to the fire for me. It was just more motivation that I could have done more to get extended, but the reality is that it wasn’t, so it’s not a big deal. That’s not what motivates me. What motivates me now is coming back off of last year and getting this team back to the playoffs, having a better record than 8-8 and playing to the potential that I know myself and the rest of my teammates can play at.”

Whether reduced time on the field benefits Trubisky remains to be seen. The Bears want to get the decision right but want to do so as quickly as possible to give the starter as much time as possible before the start of the season.

While Trubisky has experience with his teammates, what he didn’t mention is this is Foles’ third go-round on a team with Nagy. Foles had success playing under new offensive coordinator Bill Lazor, and quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo has been with Foles on two previous teams.

In other words, Foles has a built-in comfort level with these coaches, which wasn’t there for Trubisky at the end of last season. That launched the franchise into a quarterback search to dramatically improve an offense to pair with a playoff-ready defense.

The odds seem against Trubisky, but if he has considered that, it didn’t come across in the 20-minute interview in which he appeared polished yet authentic.

“I’m just excited,” he said. “I don’t know about the future; no one really does. I’m excited about the possibilities of what can happen and I feel good about it. I’m just confident about where my career is headed.”

As Roosevelt said in the speech, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”

It’s no wonder an excerpt from the speech is