Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Why Matt Nagy Should NOT Be Fired
Chicago sports fans! I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I am incredibly thankful for you all.
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You’ll have to read to the bottom to find out why I think Nagy deserves to keep his job… grab your coffee and spend 10 minutes with me.
I’ve eaten six donuts on a Saturday morning many times before. It always makes me feel sick to my stomach and comes close to ruining my day. Often, it does ruin my day.
But if I wake up and there’s a dozen donuts waiting for me downstairs, there’s just no chance I’m not rifling down a few long johns alongside a cold glass of milk.
My food intake doesn’t follow logical, evidence-based paths. Nor does my Bears fandom.
I was quite excited for yesterday’s game.
Everyone has said it at this point, even the non-Trubisky truthers. He’s easier on the eyes, in this offense, than Foles is. He can run a little bit and when he falls it doesn’t make me grimace like I’m watching my grandma slip on the marble in front of the fireplace at Christmas.
He’s also, at this point, new. Hell, even when Tyler Bray came in at the end of the Vikings game we were all thinking, ‘This fella has hung around in the NFL for a while, let’s see what he’s got. Maybe he’s got a little magic in him.’ Nope, just a couple errant throws five feet over the receivers’ heads, evidently.
It’s what we should expect from a third-string quarterback, and dreadful performances are what we should expect from the Bears offenses and their quarterbacks until further notice.
But I still got my food before the game, had my notebook out ready to write ‘Trubisky is balling!’, and eagerly hummed the Sunday Night Football song for two minutes. Carrie Underwood and I were shaking our hips ready for some football. I, too, was waiting all day for Sunday night.
I would’ve seen how ridiculous I, and my fellow Bears fans, looked had I just watched this 20-second Mitch pump-up speech before the game. I’ve heard Mitch give speeches before, they’ve all been right around below average — better than Kirk Cousins and Andy Dalton, for sure — but not much better than anyone else. Kind of a knockoff version of Drew Brees, which is another reason Pace may have gotten stiff for him prior to the 2017 NFL Draft.
The video was widely circulating — people were sharing it like wildfire, all pumped up for one of the oldest rivalries in sports. Still, I abstained from watching until after the game.
And good God do I wish I had watched it. Bears fans were pumped up from this? This?
No exaggeration, I heard better pump-up speeches in high school from kids with ‘D’ averages and not-fully-developed prefrontal cortexes.
And if you ever played high school sports, you know the guy that elects to give the pregame speech is never the guy that should be giving the speech.
I mean, was that seriously worth a retweet? That was a combination of word salad and three to four of the most overused cliches in the english language. Fighting for the guy next to you? Blood, sweat, and tears?
All he left out was that football is a game of inches. Next time, let’s just pipe in Al Pacino’s speech from Any Given Sunday.
If I had watched that video, and realized that I was in the same excited mindset as the rest of the people sharing this video, I would’ve had an immediate epiphany, bet the Packers, and gone for a three hour walk by myself in the below-freezing Chicago weather.
Instead, I watched the Packers immediately drive down the field and score. I watched the longest run the Bears have had since God knows when, and I even allowed myself a ‘MITCH!’ before I got to the inevitable ‘mitch….’ not long after, when he launched a ball to a 5’10 receiver who was double covered.
Mitch, at this point, feels like the last of our problems. But let’s quickly address him.
On Mitch, Briefly
The goddamn parade initiated by the announcement that he was going to be starting was honestly the most embarrassing reaction from a fan base I’d seen until I saw people retweeting that Bad New Bears-ass speech he made later on.
Listen, I sympathize with Mitch guys. You go down with the ship. That, I can appreciate. It just feels like at this point there’s plenty of room on the emergency boats for you and you’re still playing the violins with no one else on board.
Mitch was Mitch last night. Talented? Perhaps. Throwing spirals? No.
He once again ran out of bounds, conceding a four-yard loss, when he was out of the pocket and literally could have dropped the ball across the sideline and it wouldn’t have been intentional grounding.
He threw in to double coverage, which resulted in a pick. He threw into triple coverage, which resulted in a pick. He fumbled once, albeit one came as two Packer defenders shoved their hands through and around his face mask.
(Don’t have the energy for ref talk here.)
Mitch ain’t it, ladies and gentlemen. Would he be “it” if he had Kyle Shanahan calling the plays? Maybe more so. Who knows. Ryan Pace’s decision to pick him will ultimately lead to both of their demises in the NFL. That’s a shame.
I like Mitch Trubisky. But I also like my friends, and I would pick none of them to be the Bears starting quarterback.
Nagy hasn’t helped him a bit. Even when he fumbled, it was on a 3rd and 17 when the Bears probably should have handed it off and punted. As Olin Kreutz pointed out on the after show, that’s a position where you protect your quarterback, and don’t leave him out to dry.
And when you leave Mitch out to dry, there’s a good chance the balls slips from his hands and ends up in the opponent’s.
That it is, Anthony. That it is. But by no means should you be absolved from that embarrassment just because you tweeted it.
Miller is a good symbol for this entire three-year Bears stretch: lots of promise, lots of big-game talkin’ on the way, and ultimately lots of disappointment.
Of course the Bears had to score before the half too, right? We had to score before the half so we could all have that dumb look on our faces and say, ‘We get the ball at half, right?’
The entire game was a downright embarrassment. Us fans are not responsible for it, but I can’t help feeling embarrassed myself.
For the amount of time and energy I’ve spent on this team. For the money I’ve spent on them, both before and after I was physically in the stadium for that dreadful 26-3 loss to the Chiefs at the end of last year.
After watching the last four games, I was dumb enough to get excited ahead of last night — that’s on me. That’s on all of us.
We don’t deserve it, but at some point we begin to play a part in it.
I know because I was here with the Bulls not too long ago. I supported a joke of an organization as they pissed on me and told me it was raining for years and years.
The Bulls played the Warriors in Oakland a few years back and lost by, conservatively speaking, 100 points (fact check: just 49). If you watched the game, it was actually quite informative.
It showed you, plain and simple, that the Warriors and the Bulls were not playing the same sport. The Warriors had three 40% three-point shooters running off screens and torturing the Bulls defense on one end. On the other end, the Bulls were throwing passes out of bounds, dragging their pivot foots across the floor like it was a YMCA game, and relying on Denzel Valentine to create his own shot.
It was, in some ways, a relief. I knew that there was no point in paying attention to the Bulls in a serious basketball manner until serious changes were made. It took a while. A year later, Klay Thompson hit an NBA-record breaking 13 three-pointers literally in my face as I looked on at the United Center.
During those years, it was not fair for the Bulls and the Warriors to be playing the same game, on the same court, at the same time. It just wasn’t.
That’s how Sunday night felt. At no point did it seem like the Bears were ready to play the Packers. Not at the beginning of the first, and certainly not at the end of the fourth.
Any toughness was designated for our eyes, and not for any of the players on the field.
The Bears had their backs against the wall. They had lost four straight and were watching their playoff hopes slip away. They had a bye week to prepare for the biggest game of the season, against their biggest rival.
And that’s what we got — a disheveled game plan, zero fight, and an absolute ass whooping.
At some points, it was eerily reminiscent of 2014 in Lambeau, when the Bears were down 42-0 at half. At least that was funny, and we knew major changes were on their way.
Do we know that now? I’m not sure.
The Bears have lost seven straight times after a bye. That is, legitimately, almost impossible. Even the worst coaches, strapped with the worst talent, can pull together a game plan over two weeks that’s good enough to eke out a W after a bye.
By design, that is literally when every NFL is theoretically supposed to be capable of winning a game.
Seven years straight means that we lost in 2014, the last year of Trestman. Not exactly a shocker. Those three years with Fox were all pretty dreadful teams. But Nagy, who hangs his hat on his bullshit above-.500 record should instead be judged by that goose egg after bye weeks.
For the fifth week in a row, let’s add a reason why Nagy absolutely needs to be fired. Or wait, should he be?
Here comes the reality check. Nagy should not be fired. Want to know why?
The Bears, and trust me — this absolutely pains me to say — need to tear it all down.
They’re going nowhere. They have no clear path forward. They’re stuck in NFL purgatory, and as currently constituted, will remain there for the foreseeable future.
The Bears have invested heavily in a large part of their roster. They have next to no cap room moving forward to change their team, and they’re without a quarterback. They’re also without an offensive line.
Yet we’ve tied ourselves to Foles for another year, and to our mighty tackles for another year and two years apiece.
There’s no real way out of this mess other than to rip it all apart, bring in the cleaners, and start over. I hate rebuilding and I hate giving away seasons. But for the Bears to be good again in the next five years, they’re going to have to be awful next year.
Khalil Mack has been as advertised, but what do we need him for? Find as many picks for him as you can and ship him off. Akiem Hicks has been the heart and soul of our team for the past four years. His worth was displayed again last night, as it always is when he’s not on the field. It will pain me to see him in another uniform. But he is owed over $10 million next year and his talents would be better suited elsewhere. Get what you can for him. Get what you can for Kyle Fuller.
God Knows you won’t be able to get anything for Robert Quinn. Hell, you probably won’t even be able to trade a guy who was handed $70 million this offseason to apparently blend in with the field so much he goes unnoticed, or make a tackle eight yards down the field after blowing an assignment.
The strategy Ryan Pace took this offseason — bolstering up our defensive line and tight end rooms to cover the holes left elsewhere — is not working.
The Bears hit Aaron Rodgers once yesterday, and were flagged for it.
(Don’t get me started on the favorability that the refs show Rodgers, again, I don’t have the energy.)
If the Bears do blow it all up, which seems to be the only path forward, Matt Nagy might just be our guy.
Don’t fire him. Instead, fire Pace, and force Nagy to help recover some of the draft picks that Pace tossed to the rest of the league during his tenure with reckless abandon.
Let Nagy stare at his play sheet as the Bears let Nick Foles put his body on the line with an even worse offensive line. Let him unintentionally help us return to the promise land, and let him yell BOOM in the locker room, hopefully only about two times, along the way.
Nagy played a large part in putting us through hell. Let’s put him through some now. Once the season is over and a top-5 pick is secured, then he can be dismissed.
But not before he leads another inept offense, another team with the most penalties in the league. Let him lose another game out of a bye week. Let him blame everyone else in every press conference, and let him think we actually believe him.
Then kick him to the curb.
The Bears have never fired a GM or head coach midseason. They’re too cheap. They’d rather embarrass themselves and their city each week before they lost a few pennies of outgoing salary.
Until he is fired, he should be forced to play all of the young guys that we drafted and see if they have any worth. If they don’t, we’ll get rid of them too. If they do, let’s find out over these last five weeks. It’s insane to keep trotting out Allen Robinson in the fourth quarter of losing efforts when we have draft picks who are inactive half the time on one of the worst ten teams in the league.
If Nagy refuses to play the young guys, tell him he’ll lose his job too.
I watched Matt Nagy’s press conference last night, and I followed the one today. Both were so on brand that they could have been SNL skits.
This man had the audacity to open up his press conference after the game by bashing the defense’s effort. The same defense that has allowed him to maintain an above .500 record. As the Sun-Times Jason Lieser pointed out, the Bears have won seven — seven! — games under Matt Nagy when his offense scored less than 20 points. That may be a record.
But as he’s wont to do, he still formulated his blame game, got on stage, and mixed a bunch of incoherent thoughts in between him blaming everyone but himself for the failures we have to see materialize every Sunday.
He continued Monday: "If you really care and you understand what we put out there last night, you'll fix it. ... That's not who we are in particular as a defense yesterday."
That’s definitely what your offense is though, Matt.
Then he continued, in each press conference, to do his hoo-rah bullshit and say ‘We’ve got to figure some things out,” more or less. It’s Week 12, buddy. You “figure things out” in Week 3.
After the next loss, I’m ready for him to come with a poster that lists all the COVID-19 deaths to date: ‘It’s just been a real hard year for all of us,’ he’ll say, choked up.
Is there a silver lining to this all? Probably not, especially if the Bears keep winning. Their schedule, after all, is relatively easy the rest of the way. The Bears are favored over the Lions next week, but if anyone in Chicago could be the bookmaker over the next five weeks, I don’t think they’d get the benefit of the doubt in any game from here on out.
If they do continue losing, however, they’ll have a chance at a good college QB. Obviously, the worse they finish, the better chance they’ll have at landing one of the premier ones. Knowing the Bears history, I wouldn’t bank on us nabbing the right one.
Still, even if the Bears draft in the middle of round 1, they’ll have chance at someone talented. It’s unlikely that it will be Trevor Lawrence (Clemson) or Justin Fields (Ohio State), but it could be Kyle Trask (Florida), Mac Jones (Alabama), Zach Wilson (BYU), or Trey Lance (North Dakota State).
At least there’s options. It’s not easy for me to cheer for losses, and I won’t, but at least the losses could lead to a QB that could help us in the future.
But who am I kidding?
The AK Era Begins
Now let’s have some fun. The Bulls have just done what the Bears should do. They tore the organization apart, from the top down.
The players are the same, but they’re likely to look different without Jimmy Boylen running the show.
And believe it or not — they open training camp today.
That’s right, the Bulls, who are somehow behind only the White Sox in the not-depressing Chicago sports rankings, will be back on the court in ten days for the preseason, and later this month, a new era will begin.
According to OddsShark, the Bulls have an over/under win total slated at 29 wins. I almost spit out my coffee when I saw the number. The Bulls, with virtually the same roster, have a lower win total with Billy Donovan at the helm than they did with Boylen last year.
(Edit: That’s because they’re playing 10 less games than normal this year, idiot. Still like the number though.)
For those that are new to the newsletter, last year, I made a hype video and encouraged subscribers to bet on the OVER for the season win total. Then, as I’m sure you know, some thing they’re calling the coronavirus rolled around.
The plan was to bet big on the Bulls over, and when they eclipsed it, use the winnings on a SGCTC party at a bar.
This year, we’ll be doing the same. So start counting those quarters. Because when the Bulls hit 30 wins, that vaccine is going to be widely distributed and our pockets are going to need pilates.
Then — then — we will throw our SGCTC bash that was taken away from us. Again, that literally just sent chills down my spine.
Look out for the new hype video in the coming weeks. Let’s go!
In AK-4-7 we trust. You’re all we got this winter, my man. Don’t let Chicago down!
STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO!
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Comment below:
I am ready to do something I have never done, purposely not watch a Bear Game. I went to bed at halftime. Until Nagy is gone(and I do agree with blowing it up), I am not interested. That says a lot. I was still throwing things at my TV when Foxx was coaching but I am done with this guy.
Spot on with the Warriors game comparison- I remember vividly watching that game and it was hysterical. It really did look like the Packers Offense was playing an entirely different sport than the Bears. So routinely converting on 3rd downs, making plays. I did have a moment of peace on Sunday that I felt I was officially able to emotionally detach myself from the Bears this season and start being able to laugh at them from an outside perspective.
As a self declared Mitch guy, Sunday was especially tough. Reminded me of when we had to put down our 16 year old family dog (RIP Boomer). We knew Boomer was getting up there, and we wanted to keep her around but there was no good coming from having her around anymore, she was starting to be in pain just from walking and we had to face reality that it was time for her to go. I've tried to hang on to Mitch, not because I think he's a good QB- I don't, but because he just seems like a genuine guy and it really isn't his fault Pace drafted a 5th round talent with the second pick of the draft. But I know its time for me to let him go make a name for himself in Doggy Heaven (The CFL).
Early on Mitch reminds me of the character Big Head from Silicon Valley- a doofus who keeps getting promoted to make him look better than he is but he's not entirely sure why. I would love to see the confused look on his face in pre draft prep when he was told he was being rated higher than Deshaun Watson. The guy who just torched Alabama in the National Championship.
I like the thought on torturing Nagy through all this, but I also just don't know how many more Sundays I can look at that smug fucking dumbass on my TV. The more it goes on, the more I despise him. Get him out of my fucking city.