Being a head coach in the NFL is not easy. It might be one of the toughest jobs in professional sports. One of the reasons is the sheer volume of information that’s involved. No sport has as large a playbook as football and coaches like Matt Nagy are required to have it memorized like the collective birthdays of his children. Often the most successful ones in this league aren’t the greatest speakers or motivators.
It’s the men who can absorb the constant stream of details without being overwhelmed.
Nagy learned this vital lesson during his time as an understudy with Andy Reid. Word has it that he’s taken it to heart and is already demonstrating it during his early practice and film study sessions with the Bears players. None have learned this more so than quarterback Mitch Trubisky, the man whom Nagy was primarily hired to elevate.
Quarterback is the most important position in professional sports. It’s also one of the hardest to play. Part of the reason is it requires an encyclopedic knowledge of so many things to be executed properly. Nagy, who played the position for a long time, knows this. Now he’s opening up his vast memory bank to help Trubisky learn too.
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Trubisky is somewhat in awe of how detailed Matt Nagy actually is
The quarterback sat down with Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune to talk about his progress in the new offense, what he’s learned thus far and where he feels it’s going. Among the things he learned real quick was how much focused Nagy would get on every little facet of how Trubisky played the position. Everything was coached. Everything.
“So it’s all about my footwork. The body language. Where I’m standing on the field when I’m getting the play call. Where I’m walking into the huddle. How I’m saying the play call. How we’re attacking the line of scrimmage. How I’m looking left to right, left to right, getting everybody set. Those kinds of details. Before I even get into my footwork, thinking about the play. How I’m taking notes in meeting rooms. How we’re communicating all those types of details.
It really goes down to where I’m standing on the field when I’m hearing the play. That’s a detail that we’re thinking about it. That’s important to him. So it’s important to me now too.”
Nagy is a student of the West Coast offensive style.
It’s original innovator, Hall of Famer Bill Walsh was notorious for being exactly the same way during his time with the San Francisco 49ers. Every detail mattered on every pass play. The quarterback had to follow a script in terms of execution to get it right. If they flubbed even one thing up, the entire process broke down.
This is the kind of coaching Nagy is trying to apply to Trubisky. Given the absurd success it had in San Francisco and with many of his disciples in others cities over the years, this can only mean good things are around the corner. Everything depends on how quickly Trubisky can absorb the information and process it. Once it becomes second nature to him, he’ll be able to execute at as high a level as anybody in the league.
