Watching Ben Johnson push the Chicago Bears into the playoffs must give Matt Nagy mixed emotions. The former head coach has enjoyed plenty of success since leaving the organization in 2022. He’s won two Super Bowls as an assistant back in Kansas City. Still, Nagy will always be haunted by how things went sideways in Chicago. Things started off so strong in 2018, winning the division and coming a missed kick away from a playoff victory. Nagy was Coach of the Year. Everyone felt the Bears finally had the leader they needed.
Three years later, he was out of a job, having failed to come close to the success of that first season. Plenty of reasons went into that. Losing Vic Fangio to a head coaching job was part of it. Another was alienating quarterback Mitch Trubisky, wide receiver Allen Robinson, and the offensive line. Nagy asks himself what he’d do differently if given another chance. He told this to Dan Pompei of The Athletic. His biggest mistake with the Bears was not having the courage to hire somebody willing to disagree with him.
Nagy enlisted her for a project she calls “Blind Spots.” Okmin interviewed nearly 50 people who had worked with Nagy, asking about his blind spots. She presented their assessments to him in a 45-page report without attribution.
As difficult as it was for him to take in, he found it enlightening.
Nagy knows now that if he becomes a head coach again, he will try to hire an assistant who will tell him when he’s off course, like he does with Reid. He didn’t have that in Chicago.
Matt Nagy took an all-too-familiar approach to staff building in Chicago.
Outside of Harry Hiestand as the offensive line coach, he focused on adding names who didn’t carry much credibility. They were either young or had been unemployed. Coaches like that wouldn’t dare raise a fuss because they want to keep their jobs. As a result, Nagy pretty much had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. He even made it worse when he brought in Brad Childress, a good friend, as a senior assistant. Many believe Childress was the one who planted the idea in his head that Trubisky was a waste of time.
Being the impressionable guy he was, Matt Nagy took that advice and ran with it. The relationship between coach and quarterback fell apart, and so did the Bears. Nobody ever told the head coach he was leading the team off a cliff. This is where he and Johnson differ. The new Bears head coach intentionally went out of his way to hire assistants he didn’t know. He wanted competing points of view to help keep him honest. It is a significant reason why the team seems able to course-correct so quickly.
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Sadly, Nagy didn’t learn that until it was too late.
