No one got fired Monday at Halas Hall.
The gray that hovered over the building wasn’t smoke or the result of fireworks, but, rather, just more clouds. The same clouds figure to follow the Bears through a final four-game stretch that, while technically featuring a team one game out of the last NFC playoff spot, will be nothing but a joyless slog.
One day after losing a game they led by 10 with 140 seconds to play — they had a 96 percent chance of winning before the first of the Lions’ last two touchdowns — head coach Matt Nagy was left to answer questions about his future Monday.
Yes, Nagy said, he’s in constant communication with his bosses: chairman George McCaskey, president Ted Phillips and general manager Ryan Pace. Yes, he feels support from Bears management.
No, he said, he hasn’t talked about his job status with any of them.
“We haven’t had any of those discussions,” Nagy said. “Again, for me — and I said it to y’all [Sunday] night — my job is to make sure that I’m taking care of these players and this team and anything else. When that time comes, we have those discussions. But we have four games left and I just appreciate where our guys are at. I appreciate where our coaches are at — the meetings that we had this morning just talking through where we’re at and how we have to get this thing fixed.”
The Bears have never fired a coach during the season. That streak remained alive Monday, though neither Pace nor McCaskey broke their silence with a word of public support for Nagy. Pace — whose own future is tenuous after one winning season in almost six years — gave his last on-the-record interview with anyone but the team’s official pregame show on Sept. 7. Since speaking on New Year’s Eve last year, McCaskey has done one press conference, on Sept. 10.
That left Nagy — the one with no control over his job status — to, after losing his sixth-straight game, answer questions about just that. As he’s done since the Bears’ embarrassing loss to the Packers, Nagy said he was focused on trying to do his job and end the Bears’ losing streak.
“I know it sounds monotonous — trust me, I understand it,” Nagy said.” I know it’s frustrating for all of us and it just seems like the same thing over and over. We know that, so we got to get that win.”
If it feels monotonous now, just wait.
Before Sunday, the Bears had a 25.5% chance to make the playoffs, per Football Outsiders. That number dropped to 13.5% before Monday’s games.
It feels closer to zero, though, for a 5-7 team that hasn’t won since Oct. 18. A four-game win streak seems laughable. And even if they pulled it off, a faction of Bears fans would be furious; each loss improves the Bears’ draft status in 2021.
The most interesting part of the Bears remaining schedule is the karmic curiosities of their remaining opponents.
Each Deshaun Watson wow play Sunday at Soldier Field will remind Bears fans of Pace picking Mitch Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes and the Texans’ star quarterback in 2017. The Bears will then travel to face the Vikings before heading into the definition of a no-win situation: a road game against the one-win Jaguars and starting quarterback Mike Glennon, another expensive Pace mistake.
The Bears close the season against the Packers, who could have beaten them by 50 in their last meeting, had they wanted to.
Only after that game, it seems, will McCaskey offer clarity about Nagy and Pace’s jobs. Until then, he’ll choose to be as murky as the cloud following the Bears from one game to the next.
