After yet another loss, will the Chicago Bears consider moving on from head coach Matt Nagy following the 2019 NFL season?
The Chicago Bears fell to a 3-5 record on the season on Sunday after being bested on the road by the Philadelphia Eagles, 22-14.
It featured all the hallmarks of the struggling Bears’ season — Chicago had only 32 yards of offense at halftime, all six of their drives ending in punts. While they did engineer a 52-yard scoring drive in the third quarter, capped off by a David Montgomery touchdown, they also chose to punt on fourth-and-six at the Eagles’ 44-yard line later in the quarter.
Another Montgomery fourth-quarter touchdown run brought the Bears close. But with quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, whose Chicago career seemed cooked weeks ago, having another bad day, completing only 10 of his 21 pass attempts for an anemic 125 yards and throwing no touchdowns (while taking three sacks), the Bears couldn’t bounce all the way back.
While on-field execution problems fall to the players, head coach Matt Nagy’s game planning has also become suspect this season. After guiding the Bears to a 12-4 record in 2018, Nagy’s first season, the entire team has regressed in 2019. It certainly puts Nagy on the hot seat, but does that mean he will indeed be fired if Chicago ends the season with a losing record?
Probably not. It seems more likely that the Bears’ organization will instead try to find a better solution to its quarterback problem, moving on from Trubisky in 2020 rather than canning Nagy. Nagy’s strong first season as a head coach proves that he can helm a winning team. Not enough has happened between then and now to confirm that his performance in 2018 was a fluke. What has been proven, though, is that he needs better personnel to work with, specifically at quarterback. It’s Trubisky who is holding Nagy and the Bears back and not vice versa.
While retaining Nagy beyond 2019 might not be a popular decision in Chicago, it could prove to be a better option than putting the team back on the coaching carousel just two years after hiring him. Nagy should get another chance, with another quarterback. But his leash will be short. One more disappointing season in 2020 would more than likely lead to the end of Nagy’s tenure.