Bears coach under fire after fifth straight loss
Defeat is latest frustration as franchise flounders
At the end of a brutal Sunday afternoon, on the heels of his team’s fifth consecutive loss, with the aggravation of a fed-up city echoing into the evening, Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy stood at a lectern inside Soldier Field and stammered his way through a recap.
Nagy had to find some way to describe his team’s galling 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, an unbelievable defeat characterized by confusion, chaos and collapse. Nagy had to answer for all that went wrong as the Bears — on the doorstep of a relieving victory — again found a way to slip on a banana peel, fall into a pit of quicksand and get stuck directly under a cloud of falling anvils.
Honestly, that’s how cartoonish this has become. There are new and surreal twists to the same old painful story. A once-proud football franchise remains floundering and seemingly directionless.
“(This sits with me) just like it sits with everybody else,” Nagy said. “You’ve got to finish.”
Even after a game-winning moment — Andy Dalton’s 49-yard touchdown pass to Marquise Goodwin on fourth-and-11 with 1 minute, 41 seconds remaining — the Bears lost their 13-9 lead in just five plays with Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley leading a 72-yard, game-winning touchdown drive.
Yep, Tyler Huntley. A secondyear undrafted quarterback, subbing for MVP candidate Lamar Jackson (illness) and making his first NFL start. Huntley set up Devonta Freeman’s 3-yard, go-ahead touchdown run with a 29-yard completion to Sammy Watkins on third-and-12 against a totally blown coverage. “Can’t happen,” Nagy said.
But it did happen. Because of course it did.
Teams with a lengthy track record of 40-plus-day losing streaks find ways to consistently step in it.
Said linebacker Alec Ogletree: “Most games are lost by not being detailed and doing your job.”
Added edge rusher Robert Quinn: “Right now, it’s sickening.”
In pockets around Soldier Field, chants for Nagy’s exit were louder in the fourth quarter than they’ve ever been.
“Fi-re Nag-y! Fi-re Nag-y! Fi-re Nag-y!”
And that’s the chorus we can print. Asked how he can possibly retain belief internally as his approval rating plummets and outside dissatisfaction amplifies, Nagy promised resolve.
“You keep fighting,” he said. Fight, of course, goes only so far.
The Bears need far more.
Falling apart: Make no mistake: This was a four-phase loss. Offense, defense, special teams and coaching. A grand slam of football ineptitude.
Want a sampling?
The same offense that left Pittsburgh two weeks ago feeling like its production uptick in the second half of a loss to the Steelers signified a breakthrough managed just 126 yards and six first downs during a scoreless first half. It was the 21st time in 43 games over the last three seasons that Nagy’s offense failed to score a touchdown before halftime. After producing six sacks, coming up with a key fourth-quarter interception and holding the Ravens to three field goals over their first 10 possessions, the Bears allowed that game-deciding, 72-yard touchdown drive in the final two minutes. To Tyler Huntley. Whoa.
Cairo Santos pulled a 40-yard field-goal attempt wide left in the first quarter. It was a costly miss. And coaching? My goodness, where do we even start?
For example, Nagy used his first timeout early in the fourth quarter during a chaotic sequence immediately after the Bears tried a third-and-1 deep shot to Darnell Mooney. When Mooney failed to secure the ball inbounds, the Bears’ punt-or-go decision included more miscommunication and confusion than even the wackiest episode of “Three’s Company.”
The chaos included — what else? — an untimely malfunction of Nagy’s headset as he was trying to offer input.
“I thought I was talking to the guys,” he said, “and I wasn’t.”There is little evidence that this staff, with Nagy at the helm, is on the right path to finding solutions to launch this team back into championship contention.
Predictably, the Bears pulled out all of the convenient talking points about quickly flipping the page and looking in the mirror and gearing up for the next game with the right mindset. But at
3-7 and winless since Oct. 10, the hopelessness is intensifying.
The winless Detroit Lions are next on the schedule. The Bears will fly to Detroit for a Thanksgiving reunion with the division punching bag. But that might not necessarily be a good thing.
What if, on a short week with dwindling emotional reserves, the Bears drop another dud and lose to the Lions under Nagy’s watch?
Can’t happen, right?
But if it does, what would the repercussions be?