The Bears have been on a whiplash-inducing ride during Matt Nagy’s brief time as head coach. And it’s either going to soar through more thrills this season or come to a screeching, rickety end.
Nagy was mostly unknown to the average NFL fan when the Bears offered him his first chance to run a team, but everyone knew his name after that season. There were minimal expectations, and Nagy’s Bears shocked the league for a division title and their first playoff appearance in nearly a decade.
That run vaulted the mindset to Super Bowl-or-bust heading into his second season, but the Bears fell flat from the beginning. An 8-8 season — semi-salvaged only by beating the Vikings in a meaningless finale — and miserable quarterback play put a dent in the credibility Nagy earned his first season and put his job at risk going into Year 3.
“You can’t worry about that,” Nagy said when a question hinted at him needing to win now. “If you start worrying about sense of urgency and what happened last year and everything, you can’t do that.”
Merely being asked that kind of question is a warning sign, and Nagy didn’t seem surprised that it came up. Andy Reid, Sean Payton and Bill Belichick aren’t getting asked about “urgency” to win. That’s more of a Matt Patricia question.
Unless the Bears quickly resemble the team they were in 2018, it’ll be a persistent topic.
While Nagy is wise to compartmentalize, a little worrying about job security won’t hurt him. If that pressure spurs him to rework his play-calling and eschew the stubbornness that often gets young coaches fired, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Nagy has shown enough to warrant a long-term opportunity, but he’s on shaky ground if his future is tied to general manager Ryan Pace’s, and it’s bad business to hire a new GM and force him to keep the coach. Pace has been under fire for a while because of brutal misses in the draft and a 34-36 record in his tenure — eighth-worst in the NFL. Only the Jets and Browns have scored fewer points.
The overall book on Nagy is positive, with a 20-12 overall record and a playoff berth, but it’s the way last season fell apart that puts him in jeopardy.
The Bears beat one good team. They were bad at everything Nagy supposedly specializes in other than morale. One week, he set a franchise record — remember this organization has been around since 1920 — for fewest rushing attempts. The next week, he butchered a last-second field goal.
In the same way he tried to ride the momentum of 2018 going into last season, he needs to use the 2019 failure and questions about his future as fuel for this one.
“There’s not a team in the NFL that should care about last year — including the Chiefs,” Nagy said. “You’ve got to worry about this year, and that’s what we’re going to do. We want to win every single game and we want to do everything we can to do that.
“There’s no predictions. There’s no this or that. It’s just control what you can control and have fun doing it and cut it loose and worry about 2020.”
The mandate for Nagy isn’t as clear as make the playoffs or get fired. There are unprecedented mitigating factors this season, and it can’t be held against him if the coronavirus depletes his roster.
But if it ends up being a relatively normal season, what really matters for Nagy is whether he’s able to fix the things the Bears hired him to fix.
He can’t afford a season-long parade of three-and-outs. He can’t afford a continuation of awful quarterback play, especially after the Bears gave up a lot to bring in his guy, Nick Foles. He can’t afford a nonexistent ground game. Offensive-minded head coaches with bad offenses don’t last long.
