The Chicago Bears are still answering questions surrounding their stunning 10-3 loss to the Green Bay Packers on last Thursday night.
From the unpopular decision to go for it on 4th-and-10 instead of kicking a field goal, to dissecting Mitchell Trubisky’s uninspired performance, players and coaches are working through what went wrong on the lakefront.
One of the issues coming out of the game was Matt Nagy’s play-calling. While Trubisky certainly didn’t help the cause, the second-year coach put his signal caller’s back against the wall, calling for 52 pass plays to just 12 runs, including 33 straight passes to end the game, despite only being down by one score.
“When you hand the ball off 15 times in 65 plays, that’s not enough balance,” Nagy said. “It’s one-dimensional. Even with it being a 7-3 game, I knew that. I was aware of that. But we’ll figure this thing out. We’ll get it right.”
His inability to adjust as well as his trends are somewhat worrisome. Now that teams have had a year to study film and digest Nagy’s plays, they’re more able to predict what’s coming.
For example, according to Josh Cohen of CBS Sports, when the Bears would offset their running back to the trips side in Thursday’s game, they called a run-pass option (RPO) concept nearly every time.
The unfavorable trends also stem from last season as well. In the Bears last two games, they have combined for 25 carries from their running backs compared to 88 passes from Trubisky (21.2% to 77.8%). Both games had the Bears either winning or within one score the entire time.
Nagy and the Bears may want to look to their other leader on offense to call plays in game — offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich, who’s in his second season with Chicago.
The former Oregon Ducks head coach has mainly been working behind the scenes with Trubisky and helping Nagy develop gameplans, the team may benefit from a new primary playcaller.
Helfrich has little calling plays at a high level, but Nagy was in the same boat when he was offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs until Andy Reid gave him the opportunity to call the plays in-game.
Reid still maintained control over the gameplan as a whole, but delegated the specific calls to Nagy. After averaging 358 yards per game through the first 11 games in 2017, the Chiefs ballooned up to 412 yards per game over the final five games when Nagy took over.
Now, the Bears coach could opt to do the same thing with his offensive coordinator should the offense continue to struggle. It could help the unit become more unpredictable with a new voice in the headset.
The Bears are likely still a few weeks and a few more underwhelming offensive performances from considering a move like this. Nagy has stated multiple times he knows what changes need to be made and expects a different result this Sunday when his team takes on the Denver Broncos.
If the result is another unbalanced attack, it may be time to consider another option to get Trubisky and the offense back on track.
