Self-awareness is an extremely important trait for anyone to possess, let alone an NFL head coach who’s charged with leading a locker room full of grown men.
It appears Bears coach Matt Nagy, for as great of a culture builder as he’s been, is lacking a bit in that department.
Nagy’s offense continues to look like one of the NFL’s worst despite having enough talent at the skill positions to rank higher than their current standing: 29th in total offense, 25th in passing yards per game, and dead last in rushing yards per game. They’re 27th in points per game, too.
Simply put, the Bears aren’t moving the ball through the air, on the ground, and they certainly aren’t scoring enough. At some point, there has to be a shakeup, right? A new playcaller?
Here’s the problem: the Bears’ current playcaller is Nagy, and remember that whole self-awareness thing?
“That’s the very first thing I look at,” Nagy said about his play calls on Tuesday. “I’m really, honestly not opposed to [giving up play-calling]. There’s no opposition from me if we feel like that’s what the issue is.
“That’s not where we think it’s at. But . . . when you’re in a little bit of a rut like we are, a lot of a rut like we are right now, you have to look at everything.
“No one here, coach or player, has too big of an ego to think that it’s not them.”
Really, coach? Really? It seems like there’s at least one guy who does.
Nagy wasted little time — literally — pulling Mitch Trubisky for Nick Foles after two quarters of sub-par play in Week 3. Yet, here we are, four weeks later, and the offense looks even worse than it did when Trubisky was under center.
Maybe the offense’s problems never were Trubisky to begin with. That excuse is long gone. Nagy’s hand-picked quarterback, the guy who knows his offense, is doing even worse.
There’s only one person left to blame for Chicago’s offensive offense: Nagy.
And we’re back to that invaluable self-awareness thing.
Here’s how Nagy responded when he was asked about his questionable decision to pitch the ball to Cordarrelle Patterson on 4th-and-1 in the third quarter. Does this sound like a guy willing to admit his mistakes?
“Against Detroit, do you guys remember that we ran a very similar play, and he ran for a first down?” Nagy said. “When it works, it’s good. And when it doesn’t work, unfortunately, it’s not good. Just kind of what we have to live with.”
Nagy’s system hasn’t worked for three seasons. Apparently, he’s the only one who doesn’t realize it.