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If ESPN Monday Night Football analyst Brian Griese implied that Bears coach Matt Nagy and quarterback Nick Foles have a fracture in their relationship when he relayed production-meeting comments Foles made to him before the Rams game, he didn’t mean it.
“I think the relationship between Matt Nagy and Nick Foles is a solid one,” Griese said Friday in an ESPN 1000 radio interview with “Waddle & Silvy” show hosts Marc Silverman and Tom Waddle. “There is no question that they have a great relationship.”
Griese gave a different impression when he said during the broadcast of the Bears’ 24-10 loss to the Rams on Monday Night Football on Oct. 26 at SoFi Stadium. It came across to many as a knock on the relationship between Nagy and Foles when he said Foles told him in the production meeting that Nagy is calling plays that Foles know he won’t have time to execute.
“We were talking to Nick Foles yesterday. And he said, ‘Sometimes play calls come in, and I know that I don’t have time to execute that play call,’” Griese said. “‘And I’m the one out here getting hit, and sometimes the guy calling the plays, Matt Nagy, he doesn’t know how much time there is back here.’ So that’s something that they have to get worked out.”
Foles said after that game that was a miscommunication of what he said during the pre-game meeting with the Monday Night Football announcers.
“That was definitely a miscommunication with Brian and I. We do these pregame conversations the day before the game just to give them information,” Foles said. “Coach Nagy and I have great conversations on the sidelines. So, there might be times we go through it beforehand and say ‘what do you think?’ And there’s times you got to get the ball out quick and whatnot. But, in those situations, Matt and I have a great relationship on the sideline with conversations and everything. I think in that situation with Brian it was a miscommunication of words. That’s not what I was trying to bring across in that conversation.”
Griese did not directly address the local controversy he inadvertently created. He did try to clarify his comments, indicating it was more a criticism of the Bears’ offensive line, which created the time-to-throw issues he was referring to.
“These production meetings before the games — as a player I’ve been in them. And now as an analyst I’ve been in them hundreds of times,” Griese told “Waddle & Silvy.” “I’ve got to say — Matt Nagy and Nick Foles were two of the best interviews that we do all year. And very open and honest. Back when I was playing, I wasn’t that open.
“But i think the dialogue that we were having was around ... how hard it is to operate an NFL offense with the restriction that you have up front on the offensive line,” Griese said. “My job as an analyst I view as trying to put the fan at home in the shoes of a quarterback ... what it feels like to try to play in those circumstances. And that’s what I was trying to relay on the air.”
