A couple of weeks ago Chicago Bears tight ends coach Clancy Barone made an offhanded comment that opened a ton of eyes about Matt Nagy. He revealed the offensive system they run doesn’t have any designed plays for its star players. It basically just tells the quarterback which side of the field he should throw to given the situation. That confirmed a lot of theories that Nagy is more focused on making the scheme work than making the most out of the players he has.
Don’t believe that’s true. Well, Juan Castillo decided to hammer another nail into the coffin. Again, unintentionally. While talking to Bears media during the week, he spoke on what plans were being made to try and find a spark for an offense that is completely lifeless. In the midst of his explanation, he let something truly shocking slip.
#Bears OL coach Juan Castillo said coaches just looked at some of the run schemes they used early in the season: "We’re going to talk about it as a staff … because there are some schemes that we’ve had some success in. Just talk about those. Maybe doing those a little more."
— Adam Hoge (@AdamHoge) November 18, 2020
That confirms yet another theory.
For the first couple of weeks, it looked like the Bears had altered some of their scheme. They were putting Mitch Trubisky under center a lot more and had shifted to more outside-zone with their running plays. It seemed to work well. David Montgomery and Tarik Cohen were finding more space than they’d seen almost all of last year. Then all of sudden towards the end of September, it felt like those plays vanished.
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Coincidentally it was around the same time Nick Foles was made the starting quarterback. People have wondered why Trubisky got such a quick hook as a starter. Yes, he played badly in Atlanta but he was still 2-0 going into that game. This revelation would seem to reinforce that Nagy wasn’t comfortable running that offensive style. He wanted to run his offense. That is why they traded for Foles. So the switch was made.
Matt Nagy found out Foles wasn’t his magic fix
It was apparent the coach thought the veteran QB would make the system work properly. He’d played in it twice before in Kansas City and Philadelphia. It didn’t take long to realize that players make the system every bit as much as the system makes the players. Injuries mounted on the offensive line and soon the immobile Foles started to get hit. A lot. Finally, against the Vikings on Monday night, he was carted off.
Only now with the season teetering on the brink did it occur to the coaching staff that maybe, just maybe, going away from the running system that was working two months ago was probably a bad idea. All of this is further proof of just how unprepared Nagy was for the task he took on back in 2018. He was made to believe the Chiefs offense was foolproof. Just implement it and watch the points rack up.
One can imagine how big of a wakeup call 2020 has been.
Nagy’s stubbornness wasn’t out of spite. It was based on faith that his system would work. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a play-caller long enough to understand systems are dictated by the talent available. Matt Nagy didn’t have Travis Kelce or Tyreek Hill for this offense. He had different players with different skillsets.
Rather than adjust things to accent what they did best? He chose to run the offense exactly as he did in Kansas City. It shouldn’t be a surprise everything went to hell when the injuries started to mount.