CHICAGO _ Remember that ire in Matt Nagy's face, the irate tone, the contentious incredulity?
If it had been a cartoon, mushroom clouds would have been bursting from Nagy's ears with a train whistle screaming above his head. But this was real life, the postmortem after the Chicago Bears' 17-16 home loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Oct. 27.
A promising Sunday had ended in distress when kicker Eddy Pineiro pulled his 41-yard field-goal attempt, the fall breeze steering the football just outside the left upright.
By inches. As time expired.
And that kick had missed its mark after Nagy grew anxious and conservative in the final minute, opting to have his offense take a knee and a 1-yard loss on first down with 43 seconds remaining rather than try to shorten the game-deciding attempt.
That decision had left many perplexed even before Pineiro tried the kick, prompting questions to the Bears coach in the hour after the loss.
"Matt, can you walk us through your thought process on taking the knee before the final kick?"
Nagy bristled. He asserted he had "zero thought of running the ball" in that situation. He feared a potential fumble. Or a loss of 3 or 4 yards.
A follow-up suggestion that quarterback Mitch Trubisky could have thrown a pass made Nagy's head spin. "Throw the football? Right then and there?" he snapped. "What happens if you take a sack or there's a fumble?"
You lose the game.
"That's right. Yeah," Nagy said. "Exactly. So, no, there was zero thought of that. I'll just be brutally clear. Zero thought of throwing the football. Zero thought of running the football. You understand me?"
Remember the resulting firestorm?
The inquest into why Nagy had ditched his aggressive mentality.
The revelation that Pineiro ideally wouldn't have wanted to try that kick from the left hash.
The follow-ups on whether the end-of-game communication processes had broken down.
Yet lost amid all that confusion was a much more disconcerting reality. This was the critical point when the Bears' faith in Trubisky truly began to unravel. This was the unacceptable loss that never should have happened. This was the nadir of a taxing 10-day period in which Trubisky not only failed to steady a rocking ship but instead ripped a hole in the bow as he attempted to toss the anchor.
This is where the 2019 Bears began to sink. This is a big reason general manager Ryan Pace traded a fourth-round pick to the Jaguars in March to acquire Nick Foles. This is why the Bears declined the 2021 fifth-year option on Trubisky's rookie deal, a $24.8 million price tag.
This is why Trubisky now finds himself facing an open competition for the starting quarterback role.
