With Nick Foles now the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears, head coach Matt Nagy’s offense can be fully evaluated.
With Nick Foles now the starting quarterback of the Chicago Bears, head coach Matt Nagy will now have the ability to run his full offense.
One of the reasons why Foles was targeted by the Bears this past offseason is because of his knowledge of Nagy’s offense. Knowledge that now backup quarterback Mitchell Trubisky failed to grasp during his first three seasons under Nagy.
Criticism over Nagy’s offense and play call has increased over the course of the past season given the Bears’ struggle to score points. The issue is that Nagy did not have the quarterback that could operate within his system.
That is a large part of the reason why Nagy altered his offensive gameplan through the first 10 quarters of the Bears’ 2020 regular season. No longer was Nagy emphasizing taking shots downfield and instead, Nagy was handcuffed to calling short-yardage plays and emphasizing the run game.
The issue is that the Bears were not finding consistent success with that strategy. Sure, they had the fourth quarter against the Detroit Lions in Week 1 and the first half against the New York Giants in Week 2 but the end result was that they were leaving too many points and opportunities on the field. Look no further than on Trubisky’s interception against the Atlanta Falcons this past Sunday:
Nagy was able to scheme Allen Robinson open but instead Trubisky failed to recognize that the Falcons were in zone coverage and threw towards tight end, Jimmy Graham. The issue is that the Falcons’ defender behind Graham was converging on the throw and that led to an easy interception.
That would be the reason why the decision was made to bench Trubisky and name Foles the starting quarterback.
With Foles now the starting quarterback for the Bears, we can now have a full and fair evaluation of Nagy’s offense. Reason being that Foles can make the plays and throws that Nagy’s system requires. Bears’ wide receiver coach Mike Furrey was pretty blunt about that fact.
Foles will now allow evaluators to determine if Nagy’s offense works and it was just the quarterback that was causing the struggles, or if Nagy’s offense is flawed.
How will this look on the field?
