Matt Nagy has nothing left to lose as he finishes what will almost certainly be his final season as Bears head coach.
That’s because he has already lost virtually everything.
The Bears’ inept offense, which has looked viable only in isolated stretches over the last three seasons, has left them sitting 4-9 with four games remaining. While the final month of the season will be a thrilling scramble for playoff spots for most of the NFL — 26 of 32 teams were in the playoff field or within one game of it going into Sunday — there’s very little chance of excitement for the Bears.
So there’s minimal, if any, long-term significance in the last four games for Nagy. But in the immediacy, he must make the most of them for his own sake — he needs one more victory to assure himself a winning record over his tenure — and for a television audience desperate to be entertained.
If he has anything at all left in his bag of tricks, and he’d surely be scraping the bottom of it by now, this would be a great time to break it out.
Somehow the Bears have gotten more tiresome this season than when they went 8-8 last season and the season before.
The most “fun” they’ve been, as Nagy put it, was having one good quarter in what later unraveled as a 45-30 loss to the Packers last week. Their nine losses have come by a staggering 127 points. The tantalizing potential of rookie quarterback Justin Fields is the only thing keeping anyone’s attention at this point.
But amid the dreariness and the looming likelihood of being fired, Nagy has an opportunity to make his remaining games compelling. They’re all winnable, starting Monday night against the Vikings. The Bears finish with Seahawks, Giants and a rematch with the Vikings after that.
There’s no point, by the way, in the Bears checking out of these games in the interest of improving their draft position. Their 2022 first-round pick goes to the Giants as part of the trade for Fields.
Anyway, not only can Nagy show everyone a good time by igniting the offense, he gets another shot at showing he can be a creative, timely and effective play caller. That won’t impact his standing with the Bears, but it would help his chances of getting even a coordinator job when he leaves. With offensive coordinator Bill Lazor sidelined by the coronavirus, it’s likely Nagy will resume play calling.
That was supposedly a strength of his when the Bears pried him from the Chiefs in 2018, but that reputation has disintegrated. Under Nagy, the Bears have scored the eighth-fewest points in the NFL, managed the third-fewest yards per play, rushed for the sixth-fewest yards per rush, posted the seventh-worst passer rating and been fifth-worst on third downs.
Those numbers alone are conclusive to compel the Bears to fire him, but his odd handling of play calling has been just as troubling. In addition to his ongoing allergy to running the ball and various confusing decisions, he gave play calling to Lazor last season, took it back in the offseason with no clear explanation, then knew he had to give it back to him three games into this season.
Nothing Nagy does Monday or the rest of the season will negate or offset the pile of failures that has accumulated, but he can at least reclaim a bit of respectability. And in doing so, he’d allow for a semi-happy ending to his run with the Bears. The joy of 2018 is irretrievably lost, but he has a chance to bring back a semblance of that excitement with the time he has left.
