The Bears are going nowhere fast.
After another disappointing season that saw a Super Bowl-caliber defense wasted because of offensive ineptitude, the Bears have decided to bring back the architect of the offense that ranked 26th in the league in total offense this season.
“We need better production from the quarterback position to be successful,” said Bears chairman George McCaskey, who will bring back Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace for 2021 without extensions.
I understand that the easy thing to do in this situation is to blame all of this on Mitch Trubisky. He’s been very underwhelming for most of his tenure in Chicago after being selected with the second overall pick in the 2017 draft.
But he wasn’t the only one holding that offense back this season. In case you forgot, Nick Foles started seven games this season and that offense looked just as bad as it did with Trubisky behind center. The team was 2-5 during the stretch where Foles started and only averaged 16.7 points a game and 272.1 yards per game. This is the same Foles that led Philadelphia to a Super Bowl and had a passer rating of 106.1 in that game.
In Trubisky’s starts the team was 6-4, averaged 26.4 points and 363 yards per contest.
Remind me again whose decision it was to bench Trubisky after a 3-0 start to the season? Oh yeah, it was Nagy’s.
Also, who wasn’t able to find a way to run the ball effectively for the majority of the season? I’m pretty sure it was Nagy.
And lastly, whose job is it to make sure that you can put whatever quarterback you have in a position to be successful? I’m pretty sure that’s ultimately the head coach’s responsibility.
Last time I checked his last name was Nagy.
Say what you want to about the Trubisky and Foles, they have both been selected to pro bowls in their careers. They have talent somewhere deep inside the veins of those right arms.
With that being said, I’m not excusing the part that each of them played in the debacle that was this Bears season. What I am trying to illuminate is the asinine thinking by McCaskey that Nagy himself was just a victim of bad quarterback-play.
No, no, no… the victims here is the Bears defense which was constantly put in bad situations throughout the season, especially against good teams, and their loyal fans who had to watch a train wreck of an offense suck any hope at a Super Bowl title out of them only five games into the season.
Bears wide receiver Anthony Miller said in December that the team wasn’t even calling the same plays in the game that they ran in practice. He also went on to say that there were some issues behind the scenes that were thwarting this team’s offensive success.
“I think the plays that we practice and that we execute in practice all week, they need to be called when we get to the game on Sunday… We know we can execute them, we just, everybody just needs the chance to ball out.” said Miller. “I feel like there’s been a lot of underlying issues within our offense that hasn’t allowed everybody to blossom as they would want to.”
That’s as much on Nagy as it is on those quarterbacks. This was his offense, he constructed it and he put the players in these positions to fail. He shouldn’t be left off the hook here.
Essentially blaming this season on the play of Foles and Trubisky is not only unfair to these players, it’s a slap in the face to the Bears’ fan base. They see what’s going on; they aren’t stupid. You can’t hide your bad coaching hire by blaming it on a bad quarterback, it’s his job to make him better.
Continuing with Nagy could be a huge mistake for Chicago. His hands aren’t clean in this mess.
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