Matt Nagy is no fool. When he was hired to become head coach of the Chicago Bears, his primary job was simple. That’s to turn quarterback Mitch Trubisky into the best player he can be. Nagy brings with him plenty of experience as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. He was mentored by Andy Reid, one of the best QB developers in the NFL. The Bears made their choice well.
That said, Nagy knows he’s not the head coach of Trubisky. He’s the head coach of the Bears. It’s his job to elevate the entire team to play better. This would include certain names on the roster who might’ve underachieved up to this point. There are a few names that come to mind, but none more so than the first draft pick GM Ryan Pace ever made.
The arrivals of Allen Robinson and Taylor Gabriel have made the presence of former first round pick Kevin White a complete afterthought to most Bears fans. They see him either getting cut or maybe even traded at some point soon. Nagy though doesn’t seem to buy that line of thinking at all.
Matt Nagy determined to help Kevin White regain his career
If anybody knows about the struggle of making it as a player, it’s Nagy. He had to fight for his football career after leaving college for years, grinding out a living in the Arena League. Then he had to climb the ladder slowly as an assistant coach, almost missing his NFL shot entirely. So he has at least some empathy for White and what he’s going through.
Subscribe to the BFR Youtube channel and ride shotgun with Dave and Ficky as they break down Bears football like nobody else.
That might explain why he sounded so determined to help the young receiver rebound after three frustrating years of disappointment.
“I know that this is a kid, just from the outside, this is a kid that had a lot of expectations put on him by being a first-round draft pick,” Nagy said Tuesday morning at the owners meeting. “To anybody out there and to himself, has he lived up to what the first-round draft pick is supposed (to be)? No, he hasn’t. But that’s OK though. He’s young.
For me, I really, truly mean this when I say it: I am really excited to dig deep into him and put him in the best situation possible for Kevin White to succeed. Here is a guy we have on our roster that to a lot of people can get lost in the shuffle or just pushed to the side. That’s not going to happen. We’re going to give him every opportunity to succeed.”
White has been beset by constant injury problems. His rookie year never got started due to a fractured leg. His second season began well but he ended up fracturing the other leg after barely a month. This past year he made it to opening day only to have a hard hit lead to a broken scapula. The luck for him has been extraordinarily poor.
Then again he didn’t get much help from the coaching staff. White had two different offensive coordinators and three different wide receiver coaches during his first three years in the league. It’s hard to get going in the pros with that kind of turnover. Nagy is determined to see what he can do in a stable system where he no longer has to be “the guy.” It certainly would be a nice comeback story.
