Things change fast in the NFL. It takes hard work and boundless sweat to build something good in professional sports. Conversely, it takes mere months, weeks, days, or even hours to tear it all down. Going into 2019, Matt Nagy was on top of the world. He was the reigning Coach of the Year. He’d just taken a team that finished 5-11 in 2017 to a 12-4 record and their first division title since 2010.
Optimism was soaring for the Chicago Bears. With an elite defense in place, all they needed was for the offense to take a step forward. Not an unreasonable demand. It was their second year in Nagy’s system. Progress should be expected. Mitch Trubisky just had to stick close to the form he displayed in 2018.
Just a little better.
Instead what fans got was a colossal regression. The offense finished 29th in the league. They couldn’t run the ball and Trubisky had just 17 touchdown passes. Seven fewer than the previous year. Yet when it comes to who deserves blame for the 8-8 flop, Bears fans pointed fingers at one man. Out of more than 1,800 fans polled by Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic, Nagy received 45.4% of the vote. Trubisky and GM Ryan Pace each received just over 23% apiece.
Considering how much went wrong with the offense last season, and Nagy as head coach is running the offense, this result isn’t too surprising. It’s admittedly unfair to pin blame in this fashion, but I was curious how fans viewed last season’s disappointment through this lens. The offensive line did receive 30 write-in votes (1.6 percent).
“Injuries” was also a common response, and a handful wanted to pin it on everyone. One respondent referred to 2019 as, “A perfect storm of inflated expectation and regression to the mean based on random chance.”
Matt Nagy hasn’t delivered on what was promised
Is Nagy a bad coach? No. The man has displayed the leadership and management skills a good head coach needs. He’s never produced a losing record yet in his career. Something that must be kept in mind. Yet fans are focused on the primary issue. Nagy was hired to fix the Bears offense and by extension turn Mitch Trubisky into a legitimate franchise quarterback.
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He’s done neither of those things. The offense has had a few strong games from time to time but is mostly average-to-bad the rest of the time. Much of that is thanks to the inconsistency of Trubisky. The young QB just hasn’t been able to grasp Nagy’s complex and demanding West Coast-style system. Something people were worried about with his overall lack of experience coming out of North Carolina.
What has fans in a proper fury is Nagy’s general lack of flexibility. He didn’t try to mold his system around Trubisky’s strengths until midway through the season and flat out refused to run the ball at times. To his credit, the man admitted to such mistakes. He is intent on correcting them this year. Whether he can is what fans aren’t so sure about.
