Matt Nagy isn’t coddling his team in the wake of one of its most disappointing playoff defeats in a long time. Losing 16-15 to the defending champions because the kicker clanged a 43-yarder off the goal post sting. It stings a lot. What makes it worse is the Chicago Bears feel they could’ve made a run at the Super Bowl. Nagy wants to make sure they don’t forget that. So he’s showed them the end of that game every week in meetings since. One person who questions that tactic? Former coach Jeff Fisher.
He knows a thing or two about gutwrenching playoff defeats. He suffered his fair share of them during an extended career with the Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans. While he understands that it’s Nagy’s team and he is going to do things his way, Fisher couldn’t help but wonder if he might be doing it the wrong way. That it may be best for the team to simply forget the loss and focus on the future.
That is why he never showed his teams clips from the most tragic loss of his coaching career.
“This is Coach Nagy’s, it’s his prerogative to do what he wants,” Fisher said. “At some point he’s gonna let it go. Some point they need to go ahead and win a football game, you know that’s months away from now.”
His coaching tenure included a Titans Super Bowl loss to the Rams in one of the most dramatic Super Bowls of all-time. Hence, he knows about coming back from a bitter postseason defeat.
“No. Actually, it took me about eight years to watch it,” Fisher said. “We just put it behind us and I hadn’t seen it. It was one of those deals where it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, you go on and we actually had a better team the next year. The challenge was getting them focused and keeping them focused late in the season because they wanted to get right back, so no I didn’t show it to them.”
Jeff Fisher can’t claim his method was a success
Fisher is a vastly experienced coach who won a lot of football games. He also has strong ties to the Bears organization, having been a member of the team in the 1980s. However, it feels like he doesn’t have the best leg to stand on in this situation. A big reason for this is there is no evidence to support his decision to not show his team bitter defeats after they happened.
For example, the Titans lost in the Super Bowl. Fisher admitted he didn’t show them. The next year they had the exact same record of 13-3. Only this time they were blown out in their own building 24-10 by the Baltimore Ravens. Some would say that loss hurt even more. So one can imagine Fisher didn’t show that one to them either. The next year they didn’t even make the playoffs.
By contrast? Tom Brady has admitted he still watches tape of the Super Bowl loss suffered against the New York Giants back in 2008. The game that cost New England a perfect season. He said this after winning two championships since that defeat. So maybe Nagy might know what he’s doing.
