The Green Bay Packers game was bad enough. Losing 41-25 in a game that wasn’t even that close was a humiliation. Yet this Chicago Bears team somehow found a way to top themselves. Facing a Detroit Lions team missing its top wide receiver and having just fired its head coach, they coughed up a 23-13 lead in the second including 14 points in the final five minutes to lose 34-30. All set up by a comedy of errors well-coached and constructed teams don’t make. As a result, things have grown bleak at Halas Hall.
A source indicated that the atmosphere has grown ominous. There is a serious sense of dread that ownership may drop the hammer at some point this week, sending both head coach Matt Nagy and GM Ryan Pace packing. In fact, the source did reveal that George McCaskey is feeling a ton of outside pressure, not just from fans and media but also from others close to him that it’s time to make a change.
Something Bears ownership has never done in its history.
Even Marc Trestman and Phil Emery survived to the end of 2014 despite that incredible back-to-back sequence of New England and Green Bay both hanging 50 points on the Bears defense in massive blowouts. So it would be a massive change in philosophy if McCaskey went through with this. Yet after a sixth-consecutive loss which featured comedically bad coaching at times? It’s hard to justify a point in further this facade.
The writing is on the wall. Nagy and Pace are done. They doubled down on themselves this season in order to make an all-out push to the playoffs. Things started great at 5-1. Now the Bears are 5-7. It is the biggest collapse in modern team history.
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Halas Hall needs new leadership from top to bottom
The reality is this feeling is all too familiar. The second-oldest team in the league collapses down the stretch with a string of brutal losses. It is almost a carbon copy of six years. Just not quite as bad in terms of how ugly the scores look. Yet the pain is the same. Fans having to watch another overpaid group of players not deliver when they’re needed most. It’s little wonder the calls for a complete housecleaning have grown deafening.
Nagy and Pace aren’t the only ones on the hot seat too. Team president Ted Phillips is under more fire than ever before. While people continue to argue he has nothing to do with football operations, the reality is he’s McCaskey’s right-hand man. He had direct input in every major hire this team has made from 1999 to now including Dick Jauron, Marc Trestman, and Nagy along with Emery and Pace.
Five playoff appearances in 21 years. How is that excusable?
Halas Hall has grown far too comfortable with mediocrity. Phillips is a symptom of the overall problem. The McCaskeys seem to run this franchise too much like a corporation and not enough like a football team. They’re so concerned about making money so they keep him in charge. What they fail to realize is they’d make even more money than they have if they were winning all the time.
Four other teams are already ahead of the Bears in their search for news GMs and/or head coaches. The longer they wait, the greater the likelihood they could miss out on the best candidates available. Make the change.