Nobody can ever say Matt Nagy misses an opportunity to motivate his team. With the Chicago Bears 3-4, the head coach knows he must do everything in his power to make his players believe this 2019 is far from over. Yes they’re down and struggling, but it only that one big win to spark a turnaround. No team better exemplifies this reality than the newly-crowned World Series champion Washington Nationals.
Like the rest of the country, Nagy watched that baseball team win their first title after a thrilling seven-game series against the Houston Astros. What many people don’t remember is how it all began for them. The Nationals looked like a team destined for the MLB cellar. They’d just lost their best player Bryce Harper to free agency and featured a roster that was on the older side compared to others around the league. So when they got off to a 19-31 start, most declared them a non-entity in the playoff race.
Then everything seemed to change on a Friday night in May. After falling behind 4-1 against the Miami Marlins, the Nationals overcome multiple deficits and four errors to win a shootout 12-10. They rode this to a series victory. With momentum on their side, they finished 93-69 to reach the postseason.
The rest is history.
Nagy apparently showed the Bears a powerpoint presentation that charted the entire course of that turnaround.
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“19-31 over 50 and something like 74-38 or whatever it was. That might be too many but I know this. We talk about it in-depth this morning. I had a Powerpoint that we talked about and showed. We saw the interviews that the players talked about. We saw the interview that their manager talked about and that’s exactly…how ironic in our situation.
How amazing is that? That people stick together, people that get tighter through adversity, people that never quit, people that say ‘So what? Now what?’ How do you not show that to your guys and let them pull from that?”
Matt Nagy will need all of his motivational magic Sunday
There’s no denying that Nagy is pulling out all the stops. He has to. Not just because the Bears are 3-4 but also because the odds of them going 3-5 feel almost inevitable. They have to go on the road into Philadelphia to face an Eagles team that is gaining momentum, has one of the best offensive lines in football, and is also starting to get healthy in a number of areas. It just feels like a bad matchup that the Bears are in no position to overcome. Especially with their ongoing quarterback problems.
The only way they can somehow get out of there with a win is if they have an undying faith that it’s possible. Talent is not their problem. They have enough to beat anybody in the NFL. It’s a matter of them trusting in this reality and executing well for a full 60 minutes. If watching a team that overcame a bad start to win a title will give them that extra nudge, then Nagy is absolutely correct to do it.
