It’s complicated
As Matt Nagy searches for his 1st playoff victory, examining his mark on the Bears’ mercurial 8-8 season is an extremely difficult task
On Dec. 7, Bears coach Matt Nagy sat down for his Monday morning Zoom call with the media after a disastrous loss to the Detroit Lions and fielded questions about his job security.
The Bears’ losing streak had reached six games, and changes to the play caller and the quarterback initially failed to pull them out of the slump.
Job statuses at Halas Hall were in question. Exactly one month later, Nagy is preparing for the Bears’ wild-card-round game against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday at the Mercedes-benz Superdome. Several circumstances broke the Bears’ way to make them just the third team since 1970 to make the playoffs after a six-game losing streak — a convergence of an easy late-season schedule, some offensive progress under quarterback Mitch Trubisky and a two-game Arizona Cardinals losing streak to end the season.
After a wild year that has included COVID-19 obstacles, a quarterback conun
drum and several big emotional swings, Nagy has a chance to earn his first playoff victory in his three years as a head coach — a win that seemingly would finally put to bed the job-security talk this season.
When asked if he received job assurances from above after the Bears secured their second playoff berth in three seasons despite a rough loss to the Green Bay Packers, Nagy said he was focused only on this week’s task.
After all, a win over the Saints would put a positive spin on a mercurial 8-8 season, one Nagy acknowledged was a contrast to the 12-4 joyride that resulted in the Bears’ 2018 playoff berth and his NFL Coach of the Year billing.
“What I’ve learned as a head coach is that it’s not always going to be perfect, and there’s going to be tough times,” Nagy said Wednesday. “So how do you handle those tough times? And that’s where I think you lean on the people that you started it with. … (General manager Ryan Pace) is the first one in my corner that has my back that is there to try and help and support. …
“The players going through that sixgame losing streak have been unreal, and they have shown the trust and support they have in coaches. They have proven it by winning three and fighting to get back into it. I’ve learned as a coach that the belief in people that believe in you goes a long way, and I think that’s powerful.”
Examining what to believe in from Nagy’s second straight .500 season is a complicated task given the highs and lows of a most unusual year.
As 8-8 might suggest, the many points of optimism also are met with negatives. For all of the high marks Nagy gets for his team’s handling of COVID-19 precautions and sticking together during “tough times,” there are questions about his struggles to get his offense and quarterback in a groove after three seasons.
And that starts with the Bears’ December run for a playoff berth — and why it was necessary in the first place.
Streak busters
Two days after the loss to the Lions that brought up so many questions about the Bears’ future, Nagy gave his players index cards with a timestamp reading Jan. 3, 2021, 7 p.m. The gesture was meant to remind his team what they were playing for over the next month — a chance to learn their playoff opponent at that time.
Some might construe the cards as a gimmick, but wide receiver Allen Robinson hung his in his locker, confident the Bears had what it took to make the message count.
“We went through a tough patch at that point in time, but I knew the players that we have, I knew the team that we have, and that we could pull some wins together to be able to give ourselves a shot, which we did,” Robinson said.“i don’t think too many guys ev er wavered off that.
“I know some things throughout the course of the regular season didn’t go our way, but at the same time some of the players and leaders we have in this team, guys who have been through adversity off the field and on the field, stayed locked in and stayed homed in. That’s a true credit to the locker room we have and the players we have.”
Robinson talked mostly of his teammates as the leaders, but Nagy as the coach of the Bears fosters some of that positivity. The Bears responded by hammering the Houston Texans 36-7 before victories over the Minnesota Vikings and Jacksonville Jaguars — and tight end Jimmy Graham gave credit to Nagy.
“Coach Nagy’s done everything he can to get these wins and to get us back on the winning track,” Graham said. “Those six weeks were extremely tough for us, but you know, talk about character-building and talk about a coaching staff that never gave up. I can’t attest to other coaching staffs, but how they handled that internally and still believed in and still leaned on the players is special.”
Of course, the problem with focusing on the Bears’ three-game winning streak is that it ignores the initial hole. They frittered away a 5-1 record, and each loss in the team’s longest losing streak since 2002 felt more astounding than the last.
The heart of the problems over the first four games of the skid was that the union with Nick Foles — the quarterback Pace and Nagy decided would elevate the offense above the level Trubisky was operating it at — was a mess.
Over those four losses, behind a shuffling offensive line, Foles completed 67% of passes with four touchdowns, four interceptions, 14 sacks and an 81.6 passer rating. The running game was virtually nonexistent in a few of the games.
The Bears averaged 16.7 points per game in Foles’ seven starts. And Nagy and the Bears frequently talked about finding their identity — midway through Nagy’s third season.
After the Lions came back from a 10-point, fourth-quarter deficit to secure a 34-30 victory, Nagy was asked why his team had fallen so hard.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I know about is who our players are as people and how they handle this stuff, and it’s not because of a want, I know that. This is difficult, man. This is the life in sports. And it’s not easy.
“It’s not fun when you lose. And the only thing you can do is continue to support each other, just fight for one another and understand that it’s not because of lack of trying.”
To be fair, Nagy dived into finding fixes. Three weeks earlier, he had handed off play-calling dutiesto offensive coordinator Bill Lazor — an admittedly difficult decision for someone who loved the job. One game after that, Nagy turned back to Trubisky when Foles injured his hip, beginning an intriguing new challenge for the coach.
Rebuilding trust
It always was going to be a tricky dynamic when Pace and Nagy brought in Foles to compete with Trubisky, even if both are considered stand-up teammates. And it got trickier when Nagy awarded Trubisky the starting job before growing weary of the quarterback’s continued struggles after 2 1⁄2 games and turning to Foles.
The trust on both sides had worn thin, with Trubisky saying later he felt blindsided by the quick decision of the coach who had guided him for two-plus seasons.
The process has changed a bit as they have come back together over the last six games, with a hardened Trubisky feeling emboldened to express his opinions to his coach and an unsettled Nagy understanding the need to tweak his offense to fit what works for Trubisky.
The quarterback has been direct in discussing with the media what he has done over the last month-and-a-half to get his point across.
“We have open communication and dialogue about what I think needs to happen within this offense,” Trubisky said. “And he has more respect for my opinion about things that I feel comfortable with, that I think will help this offense and help do what fits us and what our guys do best.
“So it’s just getting on the same page and having those conversations and communication and doing things that we both feel comfortable with — his background and what I think will fit. It’s been good. We’ve rebuilt the trust, and that’s been seen throughout the offense. …
“Having that trust come back to life, you’re starting to see it more on the field in the execution and how we go out to practice every day and practice really hard for one another.”
The relationship has resulted in some better performances from Trubisky, but he stumbled against the Packers, including a fourth-quarter interception Sunday. However, against the four losing teams the Bears played during Trubisky’s second stretch, he completed 72% of his passes for 1,001 yards, seven touchdowns and two interceptions.
One of Nagy’s primary objectives when he was hired in 2018 was to help Trubisky become the quarterback Pace envisioned when he drafted him. Trubisky has had four years of chances to prove himself, but the question of whether Nagy could have done more to help Trubisky’s growth sooner is one to be considered.
Nagy faced the question last month, after the offense put together its third straight 30-point game in a streak of four. What took so long?
“We try not to look back at what happened,” Nagy said. “We just want to keep building off of where we feel we’re at.
“And we do feel like it’s a good place with the identity of the offense with Mitchell playing the way he’s playing, with the scheme, the consistency of the O-line and the growth of all these younger players.”
Nagy and Trubisky have at least one more chance together Sunday to prove the progress isn’t a fluke against a Saints defense that ranks in the top five in the NFL in several categories. The future is clouded beyond that, with Trubisky set to become a free agent and the thoughts of Chairman George Mccaskey on the direction of the franchise still unspoken.
So Nagy will practice what he preaches and focus on the immediate future.and he wi ll try to figure out how to get his team to prove wrong those who doubt the abilities of this 8-8 playoff team.
“The beauty of sports and the beauty of competition, and all teams understand this, is that, really, when you get to Sunday … anything can happen,” Nagy said. “So the only thing we can do is keep believing in each other and know that it’s a new season and play to the best product that we can put out there on Sunday against (a Saints team) that’s playing really well.
“We understand people have opinions, but at the same time we’re going to do what we know, and that’s to believe in one another and play hard for each other.”