Going 12-4 and getting the Chicago Bears used to winning again was the first big objective for head coach Matt Nagy. He accomplished that job with flying colors. Towards the end of the year, it no longer felt like the team “wanted” to win. It felt like they “expected” to win. Good teams tend to operate that way. However, the bigger obstacle lay before them in the playoffs.
Sadly their expectations alone weren’t good enough. In a hard-fought battle with the defending champion Eagles, the Bears came a missed field goal away from advancing. It was a difficult way for a great year to end. Nagy like everybody else had trouble stomaching it for a time.
Then he started to gain a new perspective. Painful though the loss may have been, he told Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune it may end up being better for his team in the long run. Why? Now they know how difficult their task ahead truly is.
“(It was) their response to me of saying, ‘We were going to win the Super Bowl,’ ” Nagy said. “They believed that. But now they also realize it’s not easy.”
The ambitious energy Nagy felt was stronger than he imagined.
“I wasn’t sure, after a loss like that, how they were going to handle it,” Nagy said. “Because they are young. So are they upset and deflated and disappointed? Yeah, they are. But they were actually more positive and more (eager) to get back (to Halas Hall), which fired me up.”
Matt Nagy knows that getting a taste will only make the Bears hungrier
This is nothing new in the history of Chicago sports. Think about many of the great teams the city has put out over the past 40 years.
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The 1985 Bears were forged by the previous year when they were crushed by San Francisco in the NFC championship. The dynasty Chicago Bulls were knocked out of the playoffs three straight years by the Detroit Pistons. The dynasty Chicago Blackhawks lost the 2009 Western Conference Finals to Detroit. Last but not least? Those lovable 2016 Chicago Cubs had been taught well by their NLCS loss to the Mets the year before.
Michael Jordan always said he learned way more from his failures than his successes. Nagy seems to believe the same can be true for his young team. It’s not about whether they’re talented enough anymore. It’s about whether they can learn from their mistakes in the loss and correct them on the next opportunity. That’s typically how champions are built.
