Sometimes Matt Nagy has a speech prepared for the Bears’ Saturday night meeting at the team hotel. Other times — like Saturday night — he speaks off the cuff.
The head coach walked to the front of the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Seattle and told a story about his son Tate, a freshman at Lake Forest High School. The two were sharing a ride home from Soldier Field after the Bears’ loss to the Vikings when Tate talked about what he was beginning to learn as a young athlete. One of the phrases Tate shared stuck out to Nagy: “Empty your cup.”
So that’s what Nagy told his players to do Saturday night.
“Whatever you do, win lose or draw, if you just empty your cup — you got a full cup, you got a half cup, and you empty it, and we all empty our cups, we’ll have a damn good chance to win the football game,” he said moments after the Bears’ 25-24 win in Seattle on Sunday. “If you just pour your cup and you don’t empty it, then you’re not giving it all you got.”
Monday, it became clear the Bears will let Nagy empty his cup. Nagy said that Monday that he’s operating under the assumption he’ll coach the Bears’ final two games of the season.
“We’re continuing to move forward this week and prepare for the Giants,” he said.
That’s not a surprise, given that the Bears have never fired a coach during the season. But it’s nonetheless significant, given the timing of this week. Starting Tuesday at 8 a.m., teams that have either fired their head coach or informed them they would be fired can begin interviewing opposing assistant coaches for that job.
The Jaguars and Raiders, who fired their coaches midseason, qualify. The Bears do not.
It’s still overwhelmingly likely, though, that Nagy will be fired at the end of the season.
The new NFL rule might sound better than it is. The interviews are granted only with the permission of an assistant’s current team and are limited to two hours on Zoom.
Were the Bears to have taken that route, it might have raised even more questions: namely, who’s doing the interviewing? Is it general manager Ryan Pace, whose job status is perilous — although not as much as his head coach? Chairman George McCaskey and president/CEO Ted Phillips, who have both said for years they don’t make football decisions?
In January, McCaskey and Phillips made it clear that Pace and Nagy were tied at the hip. That will be the case — at least for two more weeks.
Back in July, Nagy said he was putting a quote from Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo in all four son’s bedrooms. He referenced it again Monday: “When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. I kind of try to focus on the moment, in the present. That’s humility.”
“We’re in the present right now,” Nagy said. “I, and we, all owe that to each other for today and this week with the Giants, and finishing out this week on a high note and trying to get a win. And then doing it again in the final game of the season.”
That’s what happened Sunday.
“This season hasn’t been going the way that we wanted it to go or we planned for it to go, but we always know that opportunities are always limited when you get to the NFL,” running back David Montgomery said after the win. “And we made a plan before the game, which was emptying out the cup, giving everything that you have. That’s what we did.”
