Matt Nagy is about to take center stage for the 2018 Bears. GM Ryan Pace took a calculated gamble on the 39-year old. Nagy comes from an Arena League background and has only been an offensive coordinator for two years in the NFL. He’s not the most well-traveled coach either, spending his entire pro run under the same mentor. The good news is that mentor is the best there is at cultivating future head coaches.
Andy Reid remains one of the best head coaches in the business. He hasn’t even turned 60-years old yet and already has made the playoffs 13 times in his career. For an idea of how significant that is? The Bears have reached the playoffs 14 times in the entire Super Bowl era. Reid has done it since 1999. In that time he’s planted a series of seeds across the league in the form of several quality head coaches.
Nagy is the latest in that line to get his opportunity. What fans are eager to know is how swift his impact might be. Based on collected evidence, they might be in for a surprise.
Bears 2018 hopes looking bright based on the Reid factor
To date four assistants have gone directly from an Andy Reid coaching staff to a head coaching position of their own. On average the immediate results were pretty favorable. Two of the four coaches went to the playoffs their first year. One finished with the same record as the previous season and only one saw his team regress.
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Brad Childress (Minnesota Vikings)
- 2005: 9-7
- 2006: 6-10
John Harbaugh (Baltimore Ravens)
- 2007: 5-11
- 2008: 11-5
Doug Pederson (Philadelphia Eagles)
- 2015: 7-9
- 2016: 7-9
Sean McDermott (Buffalo Bills)
- 2016: 7-9
- 2017: 9-7
This is actually quite a crop of coaches as it stands. Childress may have struggled his first year but he was 8-8 his second season and in the playoffs by his third. Harbaugh of course won the Super Bowl in Baltimore. Pederson is now in the Super Bowl with Philadelphia during his second season. McDermott broke a playoff drought in Buffalo that had lasted since 1999. Suffice to say this is a quality tree the Bears plucked from.
The fact that Reid himself said he believes Nagy might be the best of the bunch? That makes it even harder not to be excited about 2018. The steps ahead are simple but not easy. He must do what he was hired first and foremost to. That’s improve an offense that finished 30th in the NFL. That doesn’t just mean making Mitch Trubisky better. It means making them all better.
Together with a Vic Fangio defense, the odds favor a considerable improvement on the 5-11 record they fielded this past season.
