January 10, 2022: New Start

Monday morning came and Bears fans got the news most expected. Matt Nagy would not coach another game for the Bears. In the same breath, Ryan Pace was also told not to return. Everybody happy now? I am.

One more time for the record: I thought Pace should have been shown the door after last year. One year too late in my opinion, but it was due. I also thought Nagy should have been given another shot this year; he was… one year too many? Now, they’re both gone. This will provide the Bears with the new start they need in my opinion. I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but Pace should have been dismissed strictly based off the Trubisky process; yes, the pick was bad, but the process was worse. Of course, Ryan did have some hits in the draft; he wasn’t a complete train wreck. Acquiring Mack was pretty awesome; Roquan, Jaylon, Mooney… will all still be here at the core of the team going forward. Of course there’s Fields; you would have hoped that anybody at GM would have made that move to get a QB in the first round, but you never know. Montgomery ain’t too shabby either. Quinn paid off a year later. But then there were the misses. Kevin White & Adam Shaheen join Mitch as some really bad ones. One of his other good ones in Leonard Floyd was incorrectly allowed to walk, as was Fuller this year. Not shoring up the offensive line, not drafting another QB until his 7th year were not highlights either. Yet, if you look at this past draft, after Fields, it could turn out to be one of his best. I guess that extra year paid off… Time will tell, and hindsight is always easy. But yeah, adios Ryan.

Then there was Nagy. In general, I liked him. I mean, you can’t have a much better first regular season as coach. His one mistake that year, the mishandling of Cody Parkey (sounds like a movie title) cost us. Yet, at the end of the day, it’s about wins and losses. His prowess vs lesser teams was overshadowed by his inability to beat the good teams. His offensive offense was his biggest downfall; being too stubborn with it… from continuing to call plays and make our OC worthless, to the plays he called. Too many times it felt like the other teams knew what was coming. It was like Nagy was playing checkers, and defenses were playing chess. His stubborness with not sticking with the run when it was working and/or not running the ball when we were winning was his downfall as well. No matter what, he always wanted to get back to the passing game. No matter the down and distance, like 3rd and 4th and 1, the Bears would shift into a 5 wide empty backfield; I never understood that. It didn’t work, and he kept doing it… to the very bitter end this past weekend in Minnesota. He was not the genius we were told he was. Our offense continued to underperform, which was the biggest contributing factor to our failures over the past 3 years. Nagy had his fingerprints all over that. Bye Matt.

I was feeling pretty good. Then I started reading about George McCaskey’s press conference later that Monday afternoon. I started seeing everybody’s reaction to it. Was all that good will created by cutting our coach and GM loose flushed hearing George talk again? Let’s go there next.