NAGY RULES OUT SCHEME CHANGES
Coach knows there’s work to do, but he won’t rip up playbook
Bears coach Matt Nagy told his players to stay off Twitter this week.
He’d be wise to do so, too.
‘‘Is the scheme based off their young QB’s limitations, or is the scheme limiting their young QB?’’ Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner wrote on Twitter. ‘‘It’s hard to know when I’m not in the meeting room — but it’s a struggle to watch.’’
Former NFL quarterback Sage Rosenfels tweeted him back, saying the Bears have the ‘‘worst offensive scheme in the NFL.’’ ‘‘Just drawing plays up and running them,’’ Rosenfels wrote. ‘‘No rhyme or reason.’’ Analyst Brian Baldinger, a former offensive lineman, tweeted the Bears have a ‘‘nonsense run game’’ filled with ‘‘college option crap’’ that ‘‘will never win in the postseason.’’ ‘‘Take your run playbook and rip it up,’’ he wrote.
The outside world is coming for Nagy. He can feel it, too. Nagy always gets more text messages from friends when things are going poorly. Since the Bears’ 36-25 loss Sunday to the Saints, his phone has been blowing up.
Nagy said Wednesday he’ll continue to call the plays Sunday against the Chargers rather than ceding the responsibility to an assistant. That came as no surprise, even though he acknowledged the possibility of a switch moments after the loss to the Saints.
What he’s doing isn’t working. Nagy’s offense ranks 26th in scoring, 28th in rushing yards per game and 29th in passing yards per game. The Bears ran seven times for 17 yards against the Saints, as damnable a play-calling performance as he has had in his Bears tenure. Nagy couldn’t blame the second-half blowout, either. The Bears ran only five times in the first half, when the score was still competitive. Quarterback Mitch Trubisky, nursing a dislocated left (non-throwing) shoulder, threw 54 times, for some reason.
Something must change. But Nagy’s not ripping up his playbook.
‘‘There’s not a whole lot schematically that you can [do],’’ he said. ‘‘Before you know it, then you’re into a whole different offense. . . . You start getting into plays that you’ve never run before, and you don’t know where the bones are buried, right?’’
The Bears have a better knowledge of their current plays — and of their strengths and weaknesses — than they would of any new ones they would install this week. They just need to execute them.
‘‘It’s about all of us just doing our job, worrying about ourselves to execute it and to make the right play-calls at the right time and all that,’’ Nagy said. ‘‘So it comes down to just all of us trusting in one another. I think that I really feel strongly in our organization and the people that we have that we can get that done.’’
If the Bears don’t, the outside noise only will get louder. Nagy knows that.
‘‘First of all, you have to be able to accept the fact that we have a city that is completely ready to go the whole way and has really great expectations,’’ he said. ‘‘And they want the same thing that we want. Once you understand that, then you can get to the next part . . . .
‘‘Everybody is, ‘Why can’t you do this?’ We want the same thing. We know we’re not there, so how do we get to that? And that’s all we can do — control what we can control right now. We can’t control any of the other stuff people say. That’s for everybody else.’’
‘‘IT COMES DOWN TO JUST ALL OF US TRUSTING IN ONE ANOTHER. I THINK THAT I REALLY FEEL STRONGLY IN OUR ORGANIZATION AND THE PEOPLE THAT WE HAVE THAT WE CAN GET THAT DONE.’’ MATT NAGY