Near the end of whatever we’re calling the display of offensive football the Bears produced Monday night in a 24-10 loss to the Rams, ESPN commentator Brian Griese attempted to pull back the curtain a bit on Chicago’s offensive struggles in the passing game, causing a bit of a stir on NFL Twitter.
Griese says Foles told the Monday Night Football crew that there are times when Bears coach Matt Nagy calls a play that he knows is doomed to fail before the huddle even breaks, which sounds like a major indictment of the third-year coach. At least that’s how it was interpreted. Here are Griese’s full comments…
Brian Griese on Nick Foles telling him Nagy sends in play call and Foles already knows the play won’t work because he won’t have enough time after snap. pic.twitter.com/NRo7rntR8F
— gifdsports (@gifdsports) October 27, 2020
“We were talking to Nick Foles yesterday and he said ‘Sometimes play calls come I know I don’t have time to execute that play call. And I’m the one out here getting hit. Sometimes the guy calling the plays, Matt Nagy, doesn’t know how much time there is back here.’ So that’s something they have to work on.”
I’m just going to assume Foles didn’t expect that to make the air, but I don’t know if it’s as big of an indictment on Nagy as it sounds. To me, it sounds like more of an indictment of the offensive line. As Griese later explained to Scott Van Pelt, he was mostly talking about plays that require Foles to hold the ball a bit longer so receivers can get open downfield.
“It’s really disheartening as a quarterback when a play call comes in — maybe it’s a five- or seven-step drop — and you know that once you get back to your fifth step or seventh step, you don’t even have time to take a hitch to get rid of the football … in Nick Foles’ mind, he gets back to his fifth step and he takes the checkdown right away because he knows they don’t have the protection up front. Now, part of it is scheme but a big part of it is personnel.”
So this sounds more like criticism of the Bears’ pass protection than Nagy’s play-calling. If Foles is throwing anyone under the bus, it’s not Nagy; it’s his offensive line, which has been injured and ineffective.
The numbers back this up. Per Sports Info Solutions, Foles had been pressured on 9-of-14 dropbacks of five-to-seven steps. It’s hard to play quarterback under those conditions. But Nagy seems to realize this and has dialed down his usage of those plays. Chicago quarterbacks have used those deeper drops on only 14.2% of their dropbacks (36 out of 254), the fifth-lowest usage rate in the NFL (the Saints use five-step drops on over 50 percent of plays; the league average is around 23 percent.)
So Nagy only seems to be using those deeper drops when he has to. And to his credit, Foles is doing a good job of avoiding sacks on those snaps. Going into the Rams game, he had yet to take a sack on one of those plays, and, overall, the Bears ranked ninth in Success Rate on them. In other words, Nagy is doing a good job of avoiding those calls and making things work when his hand is forced by the situation.
Chicago’s offense is a mess and there’s plenty about it to criticize, but this particular criticism of Nagy doesn’t seem to be warranted.
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