The former Bears coach is having plenty of success while the Bears are not.
Matt Nagy is starting to collect quite a bit of jewelry. The Kansas City Chiefs are looking for their third consecutive Super Bowl title, and Nagy, the team’s offensive coordinator, has been involved in all three of these runs.
Don’t get me wrong, Nagy’s time certainly came to be fired by the Chicago Bears. It was time, and you could even argue that it was a year too late. But as we sit down three full years after the Nagy regime ended, we can all look back and say, “It really wasn’t that bad.”
This isn’t to say that Nagy will one day become an elite head coach. He will absolutely get another shot, and if he’s smart about the job he chooses and if the team has or has a path to a quarterback, he could absolutely have success with that team.
I certainly understand that Nagy isn’t the engine behind the Chiefs’ success, either. Andy Reid and Steve Spagnolu are the key coaches on either side of the ball and they have that one guy, Patrick Mahomes, who is pretty good.
This article isn’t to try to talk about who Nagy is as the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator. It’s more to talk about Nagy as the Bears head coach.
In the post-Lovie era, the Bears averaged 5.4 wins per game before Nagy’s arrival. They’ve averaged exactly 5 per season since his departure. In Nagy’s time in Chicago, the Bears averaged 8.5 wins per season, even if you take away the great 2018 season, Nagy still averaged 7.7 wins per season which is still a full two games above what the Bears did before or after.
I know Bears fans don’t want to give Nagy any credit for the 2018 season, but after watching the collapse of the Matt Eberflus tenure, it’s pretty clear that Nagy did create a culture that Bears fans were excited to be a part of. He never became the offensive guru that fans thought he would be, but in 2018, they were 4th in points (yes, there were defensive touchdowns), 5th in offensive yardage, and by advanced metrics, they still had an above-average offense.
Nagy accomplished all that with Mitch Trubisky as his QB. In Trubisky’s five years without Nagy, he has 17 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. In his three years with Nagy? 57 touchdowns and 28 interceptions. Trubisky’s best years of his career came with Nagy, and the way he’s played without him, you can argue that what Nagy got out of him was impressive.
Yes, Bill Lazor certainly helped the play-calling aspect, and Nagy had his faults, but when you pull back, there is credit that needs to be given to what Nagy accomplished in Chicago.
Does Nagy look better because the other three coaches that were hired post-Lovie have been terrible? 100%. But Nagy was still with many of the same players that were there at the end of John Fox and the beginning of Matt Eberflus. Nagy was far more successful with those players.
It’s fair to wonder that if the Bears had a much better quarterback in place with Nagy if things would have worked out differently. But you know what they say about ifs and buts. The bottom line is that Nagy had Mitch Trubisky and the two of them could not win together.
Since George Halas retired, Nagy is 3rd in winning percentage and 3rd in playoff appearances. He trails Mike Ditka and Lovie Smith in both. Nagy never won a playoff game, but other than wins under Ditka and Lovie, the Bears’ coaches have combined to win one other playoff game since Halas’ 1967 retirement.
So yes, the Bears have been bad recently, but they’ve been bad frequently. Nagy wasn’t a great coach, but he certainly wasn’t too bad either.
As you sit down to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday and you see Matt Nagy with Andy Reid on the sidelines, I think it’s time to look at him in a more positive light.
This has been your Matt Nagy appreciation post. I hope he wins his third Super Bowl this Sunday.