Matt Nagy is learning the realities of being a head coach in the NFL. If things don’t go well, a city and a fanbase can turn on you really fast. He was brought in for two reasons. To win football games and to produce a functional offense. In 2018, he did plenty of both. The Chicago Bears were 12-4 and ranked 9th in points scores. Best of all? Mitch Trubisky played solid at quarterback.
Since then? It’s been a rough ride. Despite top tier defensive play, the Bears are 13-12 since the start of 2019 and the offense has consistently ranked 29th in the league. Nagy continues to press all the wrong buttons. He overhauled his coaching staff. No change. Then he made the big move to bench Mitch Trubisky in favor of Nick Foles. A move that is looking shakier with each passing week.
Now he’s resorted to giving up play-calling duties to Bill Lazor.
Nagy acted like he had the answers. It appears he’s running out of them. Things have gotten so bad that a lot of people are calling on him to reinsert Trubisky when he returns from his shoulder injury. Something insiders have reported he is resisting. According to one former player, there is a reason for that.
Emmanuel Acho was in the NFL from 2012 through 2015. So he’s seen the head coach-quarterback dynamic first-hand. He also got a degree in sports management from Texas where he also studied sports psychology. What does all of that tell him about the Bears? It tells him Nagy never wanted Trubisky as his quarterback. He explained why on Speak For Yourself on Fox Sports 1.
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Matt Nagy issues with Trubisky popped up early in 2019
It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing more than a hot take. Except is it? Let’s stop and think about this. Cracks in the foundation between Nagy and Trubisky didn’t appear out of nowhere in Atlanta. They’d been slowly growing since the beginning of the 2019 season. That 3-point fiasco against Green Bay in the opener feels like where it started. Then they had their first public confrontation against Washington two weeks later when the coach appeared to be yelling, “Shut the f**k up” at him on the sideline.
Don’t forget when Nagy benched him against the Rams too. He later said it was due to an injury Trubisky suffered in the game, but it’s hard to believe he would’ve done that if the quarterback had been playing well. Which he was not. For his part, Trubisky wasn’t totally quiet about the situation. He expressed frustration with the scheme at times, particularly after the loss to Green Bay at Lambeau where he felt the team didn’t do enough to help the offensive line out with play action and more rollouts.
Knowing what we know now, it’s possible this was all a plan.
Matt Nagy is dedicated to his system. That system requires a particular type of quarterback. He probably reached the conclusion at some point that Trubisky isn’t equipped to run that system. So rather than make a concerted effort to adjust to the player he had, the man kept running the same scheme until either the quarterback figured it out or ended up failing enough times to where the coach could bench him.
We all saw the end result. Is this what actually happened? We’ll leave that up to you.