The Chicago Bears lost in an all-too-familiar way Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers. Down one point with the game on the line, Eddy Pineiro missed a 41-yard field wide left as the Bears fell 17-16 to the Chargers.
But there was more to Pineiro’s missed field goal than just that. After quarterback Mitchell Trubisky’s 11-yard scramble gave the Bears first-and-10 at the Chargers’ 21-yard line with 43 seconds remaining, Nagy elected to take a knee and kick the field goal on second down rather than try to get closer.
When Nagy was asked about why he didn’t think to use those free downs to try and make the attempt easier for Pineiro, Nagy insisted that thought never crossed his mind.
“I’m not even going to get into that,” Nagy said after the game. “I had zero thought of running the ball and not kicking it. The chance of fumbling the football, or they know you’re running the football, so you lose three, four yards. That wasn’t even in our process as coaches to think about that.”
But why he didn’t let Trubisky pass in that situation? Nagy made his stance blatantly clear.
“Throw the football?” Nagy said. “What happens if you take a sack and you fumble? There was zero thought of that. I’ll just be brutally clear: Zero thought of running the football, zero thought of throwing the football. You understand me?”
Well, no, it doesn’t seem like Twitter understands.
Ultimately, Nagy didn’t trust his offense not to lose the game, so he played it safe. But that ended up costing his team a victory.
The Bears fell to last place in the NFC North at 3-4 with the Philadelphia Eagles, Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Rams on the horizon.
