Burn This Play! Matt Nagy butchers the Emory & Henry formation

The Emory & Henry formation can be an effective strategy when used correctly. To nobody’s surprise, Matt Nagy’s version was a disaster.

Bears head coach Matt Nagy should send a nice floral arrangement to Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer, because without Meyer’s serial sulky incompetence, we’d be talking even more about how the Bears, a founding NFL organization, should fire a head coach in-season.

Coming into Week 15, it appears that nothing Nagy does will get him canned. Nagy’s utter lack of situational, schematic, and personnel awareness comes up all the time, but here’s where we are if we’re the Bears.

On Sunday, the Bears lost to the Packers, 45-30, to slip to 4-9 on the season. That’s the most losses they’ve had since they lost 11 games in 2017, which marked the end of the John Fox tenure, and the beginning of the Bears’ “Hey, let’s hire Andy Reid’s most prominent offensive assistant” mistake.

Perhaps the most egregious example of Nagy being over his skis in this particular game came with 2:39 left in the third quarter, and the Packers up, 38-27. Quarterback Justin Fields had just missed receiver Jakeem Grant on a great sideline throw on first down — it was just a bit off, and Grant couldn’t quite bring it in before he was out of bounds. So, the Bears had second-and-10 from their own 13-yard line, and Nagy decided to break out the old Emory & Henry formation.

What is the Emory & Henry formation? We’re glad you asked!