Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy knows last season’s 8-8 record and wild-card-round loss wasn’t much of an achievement. Far from it. Nagy understands questions about his job security likely will persist and be fully justified until he and the Bears change their narrative.
Nagy appreciates the aggravation Bears fans expressed after last season’s disappointing ride, followed by an end-of-season Zoom wrap-up that seemed to carry an “everything is fine” tone from the top of Halas Hall.
Still, anyone who knows Nagy understands his competitive edge remains as sharp as ever and that he won’t be willing to tolerate another .500 season. As the Bears continue their offseason reboot with an eye on making a significant leap forward in 2021, Nagy joined the Tribune’s Dan Wiederer and Brad Biggs on Friday for a lengthy interview to offer his thoughts on the state of the organization.
Nagy emphasized that the outside aggravation surrounding the Bears’ last two seasons is shared inside Halas Hall — from coaches and players to general manager Ryan Pace to owner Virginia McCaskey, Chairman George McCaskey and team President and CEO Ted Phillips.
“We all want one common denominator, and that’s to win the Super Bowl,” Nagy said. “That’s what we want. So we know for us, we need to be and we want to be a heck of a lot better than 8-8 and going to the playoffs and losing in the first round. For us, that’s not good enough. And we accept that and we know that. And we appreciate the pride and passion and the want from the fans and the city and everybody else.”
“It’s all about solutions. So how do we get to that point?”
In Part 1 of his interview with the Tribune, Nagy detailed why he has been so energized by the coaching staff’s ongoing evaluation of the Bears’ offensive scheme. He also talked about the team’s uncertain timeline for landing a starting quarterback and the challenge of remaining open-minded with a vision for the offense until the Bears have their quarterback.
“That would be a challenge if we made it one,” Nagy said. “But we go into this open-minded, just understanding, OK, when we do know how everything is going to settle and where it’s going to go, now we can go ahead and start saying, ‘Well we have to do more of this and less of that.’ That’s kind of the fun part of the offseason.”
Nagy stressed the Bears’ hopes of retaining receiver Allen Robinson and expressed confidence in the long-term potential of Darnell Mooney, comparing him to Tyreek Hill and DeSean Jackson.
“This kid is the real deal. I’m serious,” Nagy said of Mooney. “You want to talk about an exciting player? I’m so blown away at the things this kid does. Coming in here with no offseason (in 2020), coming in with to training camp, playing that first game against Detroit and showing us that the lights weren’t too bright for him. Amazed at his mental ability to handle this offense from the get-go. … It’s exciting as a coach because he has a rare element of speed, combined with route-running, hands and passion. And commitment.
“You take all that and you say, ‘My gosh! We got this guy in the fifth round? Are you kidding me?'”
On the defensive side, Nagy believes new coordinator Sean Desai can have a great impact in getting the Bears defense to increase its sacks and takeaway totals after two subpar years.
“He always has a plan,” Nagy said. “And when you have a plan, you have to be able to teach that plan. He’s an excellent teacher. He makes things simple for guys to be able to play fast. He believes in and has full conviction in what he’s teaching. But then he also is humble enough to realize he might not have all the answers. And there might be some things where he has to experiment with different calls. It’ll be his first time calling a game in Week 1 (next season). So there will be some of that.
“But Sean has been doing this a long time. He’s been around a lot of great defensive coordinators. And I love the fact he’s taking things from all these different guys he’s learned from and is now making it his own. That’s what is cool to me.”
In Part 2 of the interview, Nagy considered the possibility that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ triumph with Tom Brady in last season’s Super Bowl offers a new blueprint for building a champion in the NFL.
“You have a big-time player who could be one of the greatest players to ever play a sport, let alone football, and he goes to a team and then you see some multipliers that occur,” Nagy said. “Now there are other players who want to go there. And there’s just a belief that goes with that. It’s intriguing to see how that goes.
“Then when it actually happens and they win a Super Bowl, that’s pretty rare. You see that and it speaks to who Tom Brady is as a player and as a person. For all of us to witness that, I don’t know where that’s going to move the needle going forward as far as other players and other teams. But certainly that’s out there.”
Nagy also spoke at length about why he considers the Bears’ culture valuable and offered promises of how he can improve that from the head coaching chair.
“What I’ve learned the most from the past two years — and I put this on me — is I think we lost a little bit of that (edge) with those standards,” Nagy said. “You just think they’re going to happen naturally from the culture that you built. And when I say that, I’m talking about practice habits. It’s starting with me making sure that every single play, we are going 100 mph. And if you’re tired? Get your tail out. That’s going to be a mindset and an attitude that then goes onto the playing field on Sundays.
“I feel like when some things didn’t happen (for us), it was more us just saying, ‘OK, when is it going to happen?’ Instead of making it happen. I have to be better as a head coach on the front end on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in practice of making sure that we are the best practice team in the NFL. … I feel like the last two years, that slipped a little bit.”
As for the elevated pressure and the “hot seat” talk that is certain to follow Nagy in 2021 until the Bears do something on the field to quell it?
“For me, heading into my fourth year here as the leader of this team and the head coach of this team,” Nagy said, “from Day One when I signed up to be the head coach, at some point there is going to be some type of criticism and there’s always going to be an evaluation process. That’s only fair.
“So like I tell the team, there are two ways you can go. You can either embrace it and try to figure it out and get better. Or you can run from it and hide from it, and inevitably it’s going to get you. That’s just not the way I roll.”
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