There are many stats one can pull on to help illustrate how big of a liability Matt Nagy has become as the Chicago Bears head coach. Is it him being 1-6 against the Green Bay Packers? Maybe the fact his offense is on track to score 95 fewer points in 2021 than it did in 2020 despite having an extra game to work with. Or the low-hanging fruit of his team being 19-23 since his fun first season in 2018.
Yet all one has to do is dig a little deeper to find a stat that is so atrocious it can’t possibly be real. With the results of Sunday, Nagy is now 0-4 coming off the bye week. That in itself is terrible. Not being able to win games despite two weeks to prepare for them. What makes it so much worse is three of those defeats have come despite the opposing team trotting out a backup quarterback.
I wish that was a joke.
In 2018, the Bears faced Brock Osweiler in Miami. Not only did they allow him to throw for 380 yards and three touchdowns, but they were shut out in the first half. A year later, the New Orleans Saints came to Soldier Field with Teddy Bridgewater who threw for 281 yards and two scores. Again the Bears’ offense was flat in the first half, scoring just three points. Sensing the pattern yet?
Now we come to this year where Chicago caught a huge break with Lamar Jackson not playing. Tyler Huntley had all of 16 passes in his career to that point. What happens? He throws for 219 yards, runs for 40 more, and engineers a game-winning drive with under two minutes to play. The Bears offense? Yep. They were shut out in the first half again. Think about that. Nagy’s team scored just three points total in the first half of three games coming out of a bye week. Two of them at home.
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Opponents, again with backup QBs, averaged 27 points in those victories.
Matt Nagy is the biggest liability when the matchup is even
The Bears had a good enough team to beat Baltimore on Sunday. They should’ve beaten Baltimore on Sunday. The reason they didn’t is that their head coach didn’t have them ready. It was the same problems on repeat. Poor offensive execution. Bad communication leading either to penalties or unnecessary timeouts. Baffling play calls. Late collapses. How many more times must fans watch this before ownership understands it’s not going to change?
Matt Nagy had a good first year. Then the NFL caught up to what he was doing by 2019. Since then he’s had no answers. The organization should’ve recognized this after last season but wanted to believe it wasn’t true. So they decided to give him one more shot. Now the team is worse than ever and will likely start a rebuild one year later than they should’ve.
This can’t continue.
It is already clear the Bears won’t fire Nagy now. His Monday press conference proved that. It wasn’t feasible anyway with the team on a short week. However, if they lose to the winless Lions in Detroit? Even the McCaskeys may have to break their tradition of never firing head coaches before a season is over.