New Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy didn’t get the job by accident. He wasn’t the fallback option or hired just because he was young and knew a lot about offense. Colleagues, friends, family and even the man himself would say that he put in countless hours of work to get where he is. It’s something he takes great pride in.
He put in 18-hour days almost every week during the season trying to get his offense ready in Kansas City. The fruits of that labor bore out with the Chiefs having their highest ranked unit since 2005. Alex Smith went from a draft bust in 2012 to a three-time Pro Bowler in five seasons with him. That is a product of his ability to lead but also to focus on the details.
What Bears fans may not now is how maniacally OCD Nagy could get when it came to such things. Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times found that out when the coach revealed what he did in order to prepare himself for an eventual head coaching shot.
Matt Nagy kept journal on every Andy Reid speech for two years
Even after decades of growing knowledge of the sport, fans still only have a modest idea of just how much time, effort and work it takes to be a head coach in the NFL. Forget actually being one. Just the amount it takes to get the job sounds exhausting. Nagy offered a snippet of what he put himself through with a story of his preparation.
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Always an avid note-taker, Nagy started keeping a journal regularly two years ago, hoping it could someday serve a second purpose.
“The idea, the mindset,” he said, “of trying to be a head coach.”
He wrote down the speeches Chiefs coach Andy Reid gave and the circumstances that led to them.
“It could be during a losing streak — a way of reaching the team and connecting with them,” Nagy said. “Sometimes it’s tough love; it could be calling people out, connecting with them. [The detail is] good if you write it down. The other part is, it’s about life. I’ll jot it down so I have it.”
Factoring in all the off-season stuff from football school through training camp, preseason and the regular season this can amount to as many as 50 speeches per year. Maybe more. Each of those speeches are likely to run a couple of minutes. So for Nagy to obsessively write every single one of them down? That takes a level of dedication only competitors and lunatics will understand.
It’s also a welcome sign of what’s to come. One big criticism of John Fox was he didn’t pay attention to the small things. He was a motivator who understood how to build a culture, but he’s teams never operated with any sort of efficiency. That’s likely to change with Nagy.
