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Matt Nagy grabbed headlines earlier this week after he publicly criticized the Chicago Bears defense following a poor performance against the Green Bay Packers.
While the criticism was certainly warranted — as the defense gave up 41 points — it was the way Nagy threw his defense under the bus for one bad game after his offense has had multiple terrible games over the last two years.
There were concerns that Nagy’s criticism of the defense — the unit that has carried him for the better part of three years — would rub players the wrong way.
On Wednesday, Nagy addressed the topic saying that there wasn’t any backlash from the defense about his remarks.
“No, not at all,” Nagy said. “The relationships that I have with these guys on defense, I’m extremely close with every single one of those guys. Matter of fact, a lot of my discussion with y’all the other day, when that was coming out, that’s really coming from them, too. They’re frustrated and they were angry and they know that they can play better. They understand that. It’s kind of all of us talking when I say that.”
The Bears had the league’s best red zone defense heading into last Sunday before surrounding four touchdowns to the Packers in as many red zone opportunities.
Nagy insists that, contrary to belief outside of the organization, that defensive players weren’t offended by his comments.
“There was zero concern in that regard,” Nagy said. “I know that can come off that way to outsiders or people that aren’t in the building, but I’ll just say that there was zero concern of any of that where there’s divisiveness or anything. There is none of that. We’re all in this thing together.
“We’re in a great spot for that part of it. And now, we just talked through, ‘OK, why did that happen? Why did things go that way?’ And then, I think that our defensive guys, they’ve got a lot of pride. And they’re angry at how that went down. I think that they respect and understand where I’m coming from because they believe the same thing. That’s what we talked about. That’s where we’re at, and they’re motivated to get back out there.”
Regardless, Nagy publicly criticizing his defense for one poor outing doesn’t look good from the outside looking in. Imagine what it looks like from the inside.
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