Yesterday morning, Adam Jahns of the Chicago Sun Times broke the news that the Chicago Bears had hired former Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy to become the 16th head coach in franchise history.
Shortly thereafter, the Bears officially announced the hiring on Twitter.
Nagy was one of the hot names this offseason due to his fine work in getting the Chiefs’ offense back on track, along with John DeFilippo and Josh McDaniels, all of whom were interviewed last week by general manager Ryan Pace.
The Bears felt Nagy was the most ready to lead this team, and the best offensive mind to work with rising second year quarterback Mitch Trubisky. It’s reported that Nagy loved Trubisky during the draft process and was hoping the Chiefs would trade up for him. Alas, the Bears did instead, and now Nagy gets to work with Trubisky in Chicago. Now, we hope that the duo makes magic like this city has never seen.
So, now that the Bears have their head coach, a big to-do item on this offseason’s list is officially complete. With that, we reach into this week’s Bears Mailbag and hypothesize about next steps. Thanks to everyone who submitted questions.
Q via Facebook: “Flip and McDaniels were arguably sexier names, yet the Bears hired Matt Nagy without even conducting second round interviews … kinda interesting. What are your initial thoughts on the hire?” — Levon H.
I do want to clarify one thing — just like draft picks, head coaching picks are also crapshoots. We don’t really know what’s going to happen until we see them perform their job functions. I touched on this yesterday in a Tweet as I read some negative reaction to the Nagy hire.
We’ll just have to wait and see. That said, I love the hire. Ryan Pace said that he wanted to hire the best leader and best coach overall. He feels like he got that in Nagy. And in his press conference this afternoon, Nagy indeed seemed like an honest and passionate leader. He owned up and admitted to certain happenings that he deemed ‘failures’ on his part. His responses were thoughtful and sincere. It was refreshing and quite frankly exciting. Yes, a press conference doesn’t win football games. But he exuded an energy that I just didn’t ever sense with John Fox. Sure, that could have been nerves from his first ever conference in a major market, but by all accounts he’s a positive energy guy and a great influence. That should trickle down to the locker room.
Nagy never got a chance to play in the NFL. He talked about his AFL experience and then getting a chance to work as a coach in the NFL with Andy Reid. He worked his way up the ranks and was promoted to offensive coordinator with the Chiefs. Reid’s coaching tree has produced great coaches (John Harbaugh, Ron Rivera, and Doug Pedersen to name a few), and he called Nagy the best coaching prospect he’s ever had. That’s saying something. Some have said that Nagy might be a year away from putting it together as a head coach but is destined to be great — that’s fine by me. I’d rather the Bears be a year early than a year late.
Then there’s the Trubisky factor. Nagy mentioned he loved Mitch Trubisky after bringing him in to the Chiefs’ facility last year and getting to spend time with him. That’s where Trubisky showed he had special talent.
But apart from Trubisky, Nagy showed he understands it’s about more than just the quarterback. It’s about the entire roster. He showed he understands that he has to connect with each player using different methods. He showed he understands what’s needed to be a coach and to lead men. It remains to be seen how successful he will be in Chicago, but his press conference helped shed a lot of light on his personality and approach. And it all seems to be good.
I got a ton of staff and Vic Fangio questions this week. In fact, I get a ton of Vic Fangio questions every week.
You bring up an interesting question about their chances of retaining Fangio with Nagy instead of John DeFilippo, whom Fangio shares a connection with. Frankly, I don’t think it would have mattered. What will matter to him? Autonomy and money. Of course, this is assuming he doesn’t land a head coaching gig elsewhere (he probably won’t).
But with Nagy, you can rest assured that the Bears have made retaining Fangio a top priority. They mentioned it at the press conference today, and it’s been rumored from insiders as well that the Bears would like to keep him to oversee the continued growth of the defense. Of course, that doesn’t mean Fangio wants to stay or won’t find a better gig elsewhere — he’s interviewing with the Green Bay Packers (uh oh).
That said, if Fangio does move on, I would certainly expect the Bears to look at Mike Pettine, Rex Ryan, and Chuck Pagano at defensive coordinator. All of them are strong defensive minds who have had great success in the past.
At offensive coordinator, one thing to keep in mind is that Nagy will call the plays on offense. So the OC will certainly be responsible for getting the offense ready with preparation, film breakdown, game planning, and installing the offense each week. But on game days, Nagy will call the plays. It’s difficult to speculate who might take this role on. But a couple of names I’ve seen going around are Mike Groh and Greg Lewis.
The last three years, Ryan Pace has built a team to fit Ryan Pace’s vision, not John Fox’s. Fox certainly had input in personnel decisions, especially when it came to building the defense. But all of these decisions were ultimately Pace’s for the sake of the Bears and their future. Nothing highlighted that more than drafting Mitch Trubisky without even letting Fox know beforehand. Pace wouldn’t make a long term move unless it was for the overall good of the Bears, with or without Fox.
That said, I don’t envision a lot of such changes as you’ve specified in your question under Nagy. He didn’t fully answer whether he’d want to run a 3-4 or 4-3 base front in Chicago going forward, but he correctly stated that more than 60% of games are run in sub packages anyway where it doesn’t matter what the base fronts are. What matters is the players involved have the ability to transcend scheme (they do), have football intelligence and ability to execute. Nagy will help them improve the second and third items on that list.
The Bears are well equipped for a talent acquisition cycle this offseason. They have plenty of cap space already, will get more after releasing a large pool of players, and have seven picks in the draft. It’ll be an exciting offseason as Nagy puts his stamp on this team and gets them ready to compete in September.
The Bears pick 8th overall in the 2018 NFL Draft. What’s encouraging is that there are plenty of teams ahead of them that could be looking at a quarterback, and there are five quarterbacks who have declared for the draft that have been linked to first-round talk: Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson.
Because of that, there could be a run on quarterbacks early, and so the Bears could see themselves having their pick of the litter of strong prospects at other positions, especially where they need help.
Of course, the Bears could decide to trade down with a QB-needy team if they feel the value is right, or they could decide to trade up if they feel like they must secure a prospect that they feel strongly about.
Of the prospects that have a good chance of being available at 8, I like Quenton Nelson (G), Roquan Smith (ILB), Minkah Fitzpatrick (DB), Clelin Ferrell (EDGE), and Bradley Chubb (EDGE), in no particular order.
Depending on how Ryan Pace stacks his board, one of these prospects could be in play. I don’t envision the Bears taking a receiver in the first round unless they trade down quite a long ways.
If it were up to me, given the need associated with the value, I would take one of Ferrell or Chubb given that the Bears need dire help at EDGE.
You can bet that the Bears will be active in free agency. They have a ton of holes on the roster to fill: Not only re-signing their own free agents, but adding to the talent pool as well.
I imagine that Ryan Pace will take a different approach to free agency this year — opting to go bold in certain cases, especially at receiver. A few players I would like to see the Bears target in free agency (that are certainly realistic targets), and their positions:
EDGE: Jeremiah Attaochu, Shaquil Barrett, Trent Murphy
DL: David Irving (assuming he doesn’t either get franchise-tagged or reach an extension with Dallas)
WR: Paul Richardson, Allen Robinson, Jarvis Landry (at a reasonable price), Albert Wilson
CB: Kyle Fuller (re-sign), Prince Amukamara (re-sign), Nickell Robey-Coleman
Absolutely. Keep in mind, what John Fox and Dowell Loggains ran in 2017 wasn’t a professional offense. At all. This season was a wash, other than getting valuable reps to Mitch Trubisky.
Nagy’s presence revolutionizes the offense and what it will try to do in 2018. You can guarantee that Nagy will be finding ways to maximize everyone’s talent and ability on the roster: Trubisky, Jordan Howard, Tarik Cohen, Adam Shaheen, whoever his receivers will be, you name it. The offense will look like something you would expect in 2018, not something from 1970 like the Bears ran this year. If Nagy can’t find a way to utilize a special talent like Cohen better than Fox and Loggains did, then the Bears made the wrong hire.
But from all accounts and tape available, that won’t be a problem.
Appreciate the second question, Drew. Adam Shaheen should absolutely improve drastically in Year 2. Fox and Loggains didn’t incorporate Shaheen much early on because they weren’t convinced he was ready, for whatever reason.
Shaheen broke out against Cincinnati, when he torched the Bengals linebackers and secondary for big plays before he missed the final three games with a chest injury. That was a blow for Shaheen, who was starting to come into his own.
I expect Shaheen to make the next step and for Nagy to put him in the proper positions to greatly impact games. Nagy is a respected offensive mind already, and I have no doubt that he should maximize each of the Bears players’ abilities next year.
