Matt Nagy knows the situation he’s facing. He’s the head coach of the Chicago Bears. He was hired by the team to do two things. Win football games and produce a viable offense that could actually score some points. Right now he’s doing neither of those things. The Bears are 4-6 and all but out of the playoff picture. Offensively they are 30th in yards and 28th in scoring. One of the worst offenses this franchise has produced in the modern era, and that’s saying a lot.
This is why the heat has turned up to scorching on Nagy himself. Specifically regarding his decision to continue calling plays. That was why he was hired in the first place. GM Ryan Pace wanted to recreate the scenario he saw in New Orleans with Sean Payton. Having the head coach also be the offensive coordinator provides ideal long-term stability for the offense. It’s great when it works. The problem is it hasn’t for the Bears and Nagy.
So maybe he should consider handing the call sheet to somebody else. As it turns out, the head coach has already considered this. He dug deep into the loss against the Rams where the Bears managed just seven points to see if he really was the problem. After careful consideration, he told NBC Sports Chicago that he doesn’t think that the move would solve the problem.
“I have zero ego and I have zero care of giving play-call duties to somebody else. I really do not care about that, and if that’s what we feel like from going through it that that’s what we need to do, then I would do that, I really would.
But when you go through the tape and you look at things and you know schematically where we’re at and what we’re calling and when we’re calling it….”
Matt Nagy isn’t totally wrong about his assessment
Is Nagy calling good games? Not really. However, one could argue he’s not actually calling his offense. He’s calling the starter kit version of his offense. It was revealed recently that the coach has massively scaled down his call sheet this year compared to last season with rumors indicating the Bears are now running no more than 25% of the actual playbook. This due in large part to quarterback Mitch Trubisky not being able to process the more complex sections of it.
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If people wanted some evidence, they can look to the first two drives of the game in Los Angeles on Sunday. Here’s 3rd and 7 from the Rams 30-yard line. Trubisky takes the snap and rolls out to his right. Here he has two options. He can dump it to Ryan Nall (#35) and give him a chance to find his way for a first down. Or he can take off and run it himself. Instead, he hesitates and eventually fires a pass to Allen Robinson in triple coverage for an incompletion. This leaves Eddy Pineiro with a 49-yard field goal, which he misses.
On the next series, the Bears are at the Rams 31. It’s 2nd and 9. Nagy has two receivers and a tight end line up to the left in a bunch formation. At the snap, Taylor Gabriel runs up and then out at the line to gain. Trubisky throws him the ball for what would likely be a first down. Gabriel drops it instead, setting the offense up in 3rd and long. They fail to convert and bypass a field goal to go for it on 4th and 9.
This is where the headaches really start.
Gabriel is lined up to the left again with Robinson flanking him. Robinson goes in motion to line up in the slot, making Gabriel the outside receiver. Then as the play develops, Robinson runs a post route that helps clear space for Gabriel to get open. Trubisky sees it and fires the pass, again hitting Gabriel right in the hands. Again Gabriel drops what would’ve been a 1st down.
The play calls were not the problem. These are clear examples of the players not executing. Again Nagy is not perfect when it comes to understanding the right calls for the right situations. He is guilty of that on a number of occasions, but this evidence shows that the far bigger problem is the players not doing their jobs well enough. Dropped passes. Missed blocks. Wrong reads by the quarterback. Ill-timed penalties. It’s one issue after another with these guys.
Nagy doesn’t mind taking the hits for his team, but the truth is it probably wouldn’t matter if somebody else were calling plays at this point. The players wouldn’t execute that system well either.
