The Vikings paid 84 million guaranteed dollars to get Kirk Cousins to try to take a snap from his RG #MINvsSF pic.twitter.com/zZ2B4Ldl4S

— Someone’s An Idiot (@SomeonesAnIdiot) November 29, 2021

Feels like the big-ticket Bears items have been thoroughly discussed. So today, DBB takes a look around the NFL. (I’ll be writing more about my idol, the legendary Stephen Sondheim, in this week’s game preview.)

• What are the Vikings going to do? Kirk Cousins is just good enough to keep you “in the hunt” and not good enough to win a big game/title. How much more evidence do they need? That organization needs to detonate this current program and build everything around Justin Jefferson.
• Can Jalen Hurts become a professional passer? Because right now, he’s not close. That’s not to say the Eagles can’t win with him playing quarterback but they’re going to need a diet version of what Baltimore is doing. He’s physical. He’s got the leadership qualities you want. But that arm is backup level stuff.
• Denver shouldn’t fire Vic Fangio. They should get him a quarterback.
• Buffalo vs. New England on Monday Night Football is the game of the year, and it’s the most important regular season game for the Bills since the 1990s. They need to win. They need to kill the demon that has haunted them for two decades. And they need their quarterback to rise to the moment.
• Justin Herbert is quietly not having a particularly good second season. He was bad Sunday in Denver and bad in three of his previous five games. He’s a special talent and the stats will always be there, but there are some red flags popping up.
• Shad Khan has a lot invested in Urban Meyer but what the hell is going on in Jacksonville? There’s not one positive thing in that program, including Trevor Lawrence looking beyond ordinary. Meyer has always had the best players on the field because he’s a shady recruiter. That will never be the case in Jax.
• Carson Wentz is capable of being a great quarterback for about two and a half quarters.

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Under Matt Nagy, the Chicago Bears have been notoriously horrendous after the bye week. They are 0-3, with two of those losses against backup quarterbacks, and two of the three being complete blowouts. Another woeful showing this week would take place in front of his potential replacement: Baltimore offensive coordinator Greg Roman.

Nagy is done. At least, that’s what NFL Insider Benjamin Allbright has reported, stating the Bears have already begun doing background checks on other coaches, mentioning Vance Joseph and Brian Daboll specifically.

Sunday’s matchup with Baltimore brings an interesting option to Soldier Field in Roman. Baltimore’s offense isn’t lighting up the league, but they sit a respectable 12th in scoring and second in yardage, despite numerous injuries. A major reason for that is Lamar Jackson’s ability to do everything on the field and it is easy to see how Justin Fields could fit in an offense that maximizes a quarterback’s mobility as well as his ability to throw the ball down the field.

What makes Roman more interesting, though, is that he isn’t just reliant on Jackson being an MVP. He brings a unique and exotic running scheme that has had his team leading the league in rushing each of the last five years he has been an offensive coordinator. His teams have never finished lower than eighth in rushing and have been inside the top five in yards per attempt seven times in nine seasons.

Roman has been in the NFL a long time, coming in under Dom Capers in Carolina. If available, Vic Fangio figures to be his top candidate as defensive coordinator, as the two were together in Carolina, Houston, Baltimore and San Francisco.

But do you really want Fields taking so many hits? While Jackson has proven to be excellent at avoiding big shots, Fields has been just the opposite. He takes a big hit every week. It isn’t hard to see why this kind of offense isn’t preferred when the top priority is protecting a young quarterback.

But Roman isn’t the only strong candidate who figures to be available for the Bears in this cycle, here’s a quick look at some of the others, in no particular order:

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Brian Daboll, OC, Buffalo

The emergence of Josh Allen has made Daboll a hot name — Allbright said he is the top candidate for the Bears job — but it’s worth wondering who deserves credit for Buffalo’s success.

Before Allen became an MVP candidate, Daboll only once coached an offense that finished outside the bottom-10 in scoring. They have regularly been near the bottom of the league in turnovers and, of course, his teams haven’t won much as he was a part of three coaching staffs that were fired  — largely because they couldn’t score.

Many want to fire Nagy because of his work with Justin Fields, but Daboll’s offense had almost identical production with Josh Allen as a rookie.

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Vance Joseph, DC, Arizona

Much of the credit for Arizona’s success this year has gone to Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray, but Joseph has quietly coordinated a top-five defense.

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Matt Nagy enters the 2021 season with a 28-20 record and two playoff appearances in three years, but his job very much could – and certainly should – be on the line. While there is a lot of good that Nagy brings to the Bears, his inability to field even an adequate offense is puzzling. Because even when they don’t have good quarterbacks, good offensive minds typically find a way to move the ball. The Bears have been in the bottom 12 in yardage all three seasons and the bottom six in net yards per passing attempt the last two years.

Maybe it’s Mitch’s fault. Maybe they need better offensive line play. Maybe it’s both. (It probably is.) But the truth is this: the Bears need to score points.

If the Bears do replace him, and this unlikely with his hand-selected rookie QB, I’d look for an offensive mind to pair with that QB. I put priority on coaches who not only call plays, but have designed offenses. Here is a short list of coaches who could get the job:

10. Shane Steichen, Eagles Offensive Coordinator

The offensive coordinator for a team that had a rookie quarterback (Justin Herbert) throw 31 touchdown passes would typically be a hot commodity. But Anthony Lynn was such a bad head coach, nobody cared to look at his assistants. When Steichen replaced Ken Whisenhunt during the 2019 season, the improvement was immediate.

9. Nathaniel Hackett, Packers Offensive Coordinator

Forget what he has done with the Packers, Hackett had a top-five scoring offense with Blake Bortles. He was fired the next year because a scapegoat was needed after the Jaguars couldn’t repeat that success, but he quickly signed on with the Packers, learning a different offense under Matt LaFleur.

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Updated 2018 Bears Coach Power Rankings

#1. Matt Nagy. He was the guy all along.

“That’s who Ryan and this organization wanted to go after. They had a plan for it, they attacked it and they did it so that’s a credit for them for doing that, they were aggressive with it, they believed it, they had conviction and let’s go.”

Yes, Nagy was talking about Ryan Pace’s pursuit of Mitch Trubisky in the quote above but he might as well have been talking about his own pursuit by the Bears GM. The Bears interview schedule only made sense if they had a specific target in mind. Nagy was that target.

The alarm went off inside my head Friday night.

Why did the Bears schedule the first interview they were going to conduct last? (We already knew the Bears were going to meet with Nagy, Josh McDaniels, John DeFilippo and Pat Shurmur.)

Why did the Bears (and only the Bears) interview Vikings defensive coordinator George Edwards completely came out of the blue, when they had already reached out to but not scheduled a meeting with  Panthers DC Steve Wilks to satisfy the Rooney Rule? (They were clearly meeting with a coach who wasn’t nearly as qualified to get the league rule out of the way.)

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People tweeted me, texted me, asked me forty times today, “What do you think of the Nagy hire?” While it’s hard to believe, I really don’t care. I’m excited about new coach and new approach but you never know which of these coordinators is going to become a great head coach. I hope he wins a lot of games.

Since there’s so much information available on Nagy, I’ll spare you the same rehashed opinions and links. Instead here’s some information you won’t see elsewhere about the process.

• John DeFilippo’s interview was underwhelming. And that’s being kind. The Bears found him to be green and, beyond that, doubted his ability to build a competitive staff. When Peter Schrager reported that Flip was willing to keep Fangio, some believe it was a response to Flip knowing he’d done poorly when pushed on those questions.
• Josh McDaniels’ interview was the opposite. If Nagy was the target all along, McD gave the organization pause. He was incredibly prepared for their short session. There’s some debate over whether McD wanted to come to Chicago but there is no debate that Bears would have pursued vigorously if Nagy passed. (Side note: Nagy wasn’t passing.)
• Adam Jahns is not just someone I respect but a friend. And an hour before his story went public, I knew he had it. Being able to experience that hour with him was flat-out thrilling. And seeing him beat Schefter and RapSheet by all of a few minutes is proof 2018 has potential.
• When I went to sleep Sunday night, around midnight ET, Ted Phillips and George McCaskey were not certain who Ryan Pace was hiring as the next head coach. Pace was given autonomy. A source close to ownership told me Sunday early evening that it would “not be surprising if there were a second round of interviews”. It would have been quite surprising to Pace.

That’s it. That’s all I got. The press conference is Tuesday at 1 pm CT. I’ll be back with a wrap-up of that after it concludes.

I don’t know if Josh McDaniels has learned from his failures in Denver, but I’m glad Ryan Pace intends to find out. We can sit back and debate the qualifications of all the other candidates, but there’s no questioning what McDaniels has done. The 41-year-old offensive coordinator…

• Has five Super Bowl rings.
• Has coached nine offenses that have finished in the top 10 in scoring and seven that have taken top 10 spots in yardage.
• Has won at least one game with six different quarterbacks, including an 11-5 campaign with Matt Cassell.
• Has has been credited with developing young quarterbacks (who were later traded for draft picks) in Cassel, Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett.
• In New England’s 2017 Super Bowl run, they averaged 34.6 points per game. They scored 28 points against the best defense in the league to win the 2015 Super Bowl.

You name it, he’s done it. He’s the one guy every team with an opening has to interview.

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The Bears could’ve had the best coaches in the history of football and they still would’ve lost to the Eagles by 20 points.

Say what you will about John Fox and company — and it’s probably all fair — but the hard truth is that the Bears don’t have enough good players. A lot of that is due to injury. Losing their top two receivers and all four starting linebackers is a tough blow. But still, they should be able to put up a fight!

Let’s look at who was available Sunday against Philadelphia:

• Markus Wheaton is paid like a starter.
• Nick Kwiatkoski should be a starter at this point anyway. Christian Jones has played like one.
• Deiondre Hall, Deon Bush and Hroniss Grasu should all be starters.
• Jon Bullard was drafted to be a major piece. He shouldn’t be warming the bench behind a journeyman at this point.
• Pernell McPhee has turned into a ghost.

I like Ryan Pace. Most fans do. I’d argue his plus decisions far outweigh his minuses but nowhere near as much as the losses outweigh the wins.

The Bears are at a crossroads.

They will, and I still believe should, allow Pace to hire the next coach. But what if they’re 3-8 next year too? Do they just hit the reset button again? How long can they reasonably expect this loyal fan base to be patient? They are currently suffering through one of the worst four-year stretches in team history.

I’ve long said the primary reason I wouldn’t want to hire Jim Harbaugh or Josh McDaniels is because they’d want to be Pace’s boss too, but I’m no longer sure that should stop the Bears. New England, Seattle, Kansas City, New Orleans all have their coaches in charge of the rosters. If Jim Harbaugh calls up George McCaskey and says he wants to the keys to the franchise, has Pace done enough for the Bears to justify saying no? Even if you look at first time head coaches the last two years, two of the big fishes were handed the keys to their franchises in Miami and San Francisco. That doesn’t include Sean McDermott, who was given what he asked for after a month or so on the job.

We have months to debate the coaching pedigrees of Harbaugh, McDaniels and everyone else, including whether or not they deserve such power. That’s not the point. The point is, how can we be so sure that Pace does? To be clear, this isn’t a call to fire Pace. I think he’s shown that he has an eye for talent. I just hope the Bears don’t let a great football mind out the door simply because Pace has a solid draft record.

Hopefully the problem is simple as needing a new coach and another off-season to build depth. I’m just not entirely sure that’s true. This is Year Three, the Bears should be much further along. Blame Fox all you want, but Pace has blood on his hands too. Here’s to hoping he can get it cleaned up.

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