Kyle Long shares new details about his Bears exit in 2019 after their game against the Raiders that included a verbal spat with Matt Nagy.
It’s been about three and a half years since Kyle Long last played for the Chicago Bears but he’s sharing interesting details about his departure from the team and it wasn’t pretty.
The former offensive lineman spent seven years with the Bears before he was unceremoniously placed on injured reserve following a Week 5 loss to the Las Vegas/Oakland Raiders during the 2019 season and never played a down for the navy and orange again.
Long hinted at what had gone down near the end of the year in some tweets and later revealed the Bears placed him on injured reserve due to his ineffectiveness on the field thanks to wear and tear on his body after so many years.
The decision wasn’t exactly Long’s choice, but he understood the nature of the business after struggling in that game against the Raiders. Now years later, Long shared exactly what went down that led to his departure and it’s a lot uglier than initially thought.
Speaking during a live broadcast on the Green Light Podcast, hosted by his brother Chris, Long revealed he nearly quit the team at halftime of that game after head coach Matt Nagy chewed him and his teammates out.
We were playing the Raiders and we were getting our asses whooped and we were in [the locker room] at halftime. Our head coach Matt Nagy, God bless him, he looks at the o-line and says ‘you guys are playing like some gutless, quiet [expletive]’ and he’s staring me in the eyeballs.
I stood up in the middle of the halftime and I just walked out. I made it about 50 yards down the hallway, and you know how long those hallways are, and our security guard goes ‘Kyle, come on man. Not like this.’ I had to ride eight hours home in first class on the way home. Because I’m a starter, they got me up with the coach. I sat across the aisle from Matt Nagy and his wife for eight hours the whole way.
They told me ‘do not come back to the building.’
Nagy’s message may not have been appreciated, but the team did show more fight in the second half of that game after being chewed out. Down 17-0 at halftime, Chicago scored 21 points in the third quarter, but fell at the end of the game, losing 24-21. Since leaving the Bears, Long has taken shots at Nagy on multiple occasions. It became clear he wasn’t a fan of the former Bears head coach, but this revelation took that notion to a new level.
Long retired following the 2019 season for one year and came back in 2021 to play with the Kansas City Chiefs, then hung up his cleats for good in 2022. Even though it’s been years since he and Nagy have shared a locker room, he still has strong feelings about how he was let go from the Bears.
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