There’s no evidence that Matt Nagy can fix the Chicago Bears offense. But if he’s going to keep his job, he has no choice.
The Bears have six games against mostly bad defenses. (The Vikings are actually the best defense left on their schedule and they’re not very good.) Six games in which they have to score points. Six games in which Nagy has to show that he can do something, ANYTHING, schematically that will put the team in a position to win.
All of the arguments about a lack of talent are correct, but an offensive head coach can’t be this bad. Just can’t be. His job is to get the most out of the talent he has. That isn’t happening. The idea of hiring one of his buddies – namely Louis Riddick – to take over for Ryan Pace loses steam with every stinker Nagy’s unit puts up. Why would the Bears keep a coach who struggles so much just to get first downs, let alone actual points?
As I wrote last week, every coach needs at least some talent to succeed, but every good coach finds a way to at least do something well. Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers didn’t light the scoreboard up prior to the 2019 season, but they ran the ball and threatened defenses even with pathetic quarterback play. While yardage is generally useless when it comes to determining which teams are good, it does give you insight about which coaches are good. Shanahan has had one year in the bottom 10, Andy Reid 3 and Sean McVay zero. Nagy’s best finish was 21st.
The most important project of the 2021 offseason is going to be finding a quarterback and having a young signal caller with a lame duck head coach is nothing more than a waste of time.
The first step is immediately firing Bill Lazor from play-calling. It didn’t work and it’s pretty telling that the worst game of the Nagy era came with someone else calling the shots. If Nagy is going to get out of this season with his job, he has to be the one doing the heavy lifting.
Getting Eric Kush up to speed and starting at left guard will help, so will the return of Bobby Massie, but it isn’t like the offense was tearing it up even when the OL was at full strength. The Bears players aren’t good enough to just line up and beat any defense. The coach has to make it easy for them.
Every week is the same story. The offense stinks and Nagy doesn’t have an answer. Every week we’re left hoping he’ll figure something out. The time for hope is over. We need results. The Bears can’t go into this offseason wondering if they have a capable coach. Nagy has six weeks to figure it out and, if he can’t, the Bears need to find someone better for the job.
