THE VANILLA ERA CONTINUES

If I were a Chicago Bears fan, I’d couldn’t help but feel lukewarm about former Kansas City Chiefs Offensive Coordinator, Matt Nagy, as my new head coach.  You can admire his candor, but as far as I’m concerned starting your first day on the job with a gigantic mea culpa is not the way to take the reins.  Nagy, in essence, took the blame for the Chiefs’ inexcusable Wild Card loss Saturday at home to the grossly inferior Tennessee Titans.  Since then, Nagy, and his lone mentor, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, have been rightfully excoriated for their second half collapse. Not to mention abandoning the running game with one of the league’s most explosive backs, Kareem Hunt.  Such disclosures are like having the “check engine” light on your new car go off before even leaving the dealership. 

Matt Nagy will be the 16th head coach of the Chicago Bears

"I know that our offense and our offensive staff supports me,” Nagy said.  “Coach Reid supports me. I called every single play in the second half.  I stand by it.  I promise you I'm going to learn from it.”

Good for Nagy to fall on the sword and move forward his bigger new job.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  However, the Chicago Bears don’t just need another head coach, they need a boost.  They need sizzle, sex appeal, a jolt of caffeine and any other cliché that’s applicable.  For city that’s once been described as the Hog Butcher of World, Toolmaker, Stacker of Wheat, it’s been a long draught of uninspiring head coaches for its football team.  More than twenty-five years if you mark the beginning of the “Vanilla Era” with the firing of Mike Ditka in 1992.  It hasn’t been pretty. Chicago’s most recent head coach, John Fox, who was fired on New Year’s Day, was nothing more than a burned-out retread who further secured his retirement with three years of pedestrian service.  Before Fox was Marc Trestman, a perennial assistant with a long line of noticeably brief stints throughout the NFL, NCAA and CFL that dated back to the early 1980s.  A B-Lister at best, except in Canada, Trestman hopped from job to job like a young TV weatherman until landing the gig with the Bears in 2013.  He lasted two years, and is regarded primarily as a guy who filled in at a time when prime coaching talent was thin – a beneficiary of market conditions.  And before Trestman was Lovie Smith, who in nine years of work took Chicago to the Super Bowl in 2006, where they lost to Indianapolis; a team with a great quarterback – which was something Smith could neither find nor develop himself.  Though perhaps Smith’s ultimate undoing was his patented nonchalance, which for those leery of a Mike Ditka redux, saw this as a laudable trait of patience and level headedness at first; only to have that same demeanor translate into indifference and bewilderment as things soured down the road.  And before Lovie was Dick Jauron, another face in the crowd coach who was more lucky than good, and before him was Dave Wannestedt; a much-ballyhooed hiring post Mike Ditka in 1993, who’s lackluster performance seemed to get a free pass from the sports punditry during most of his time there.  

Lovie Smith showing anger, joy, sadness, frustration, fear and love all at once.  The NFL's version of Hamlet

This Ain't No Mud Club: Marc Trestman looking a little bit like David Byrne and perhaps wishing he was at a press conference that couldn't end soon enough

So enter Matt Nagy, a 39-year-old former quarterback from the University of Delaware, who still holds the team passing record of 556 yards in 1998 against the University of Connecticut.  A family man, with four boys, Nagy, with his trimmed beard and crew cut to morph with his balding head looks like an energetic elementary school principal.  Known as having a “connection with quarterbacks”, he was brought in to help nurture quarterback Mitchell Trubisky who’ll be in his second year in 2018.  So far Trubisky has shown signs of promise, though he’s yet to prove he’s worth what Chicago gave up to move just one spot in the 2017 draft to nab him in the first round.  To hire a purported quarterback guru almost sounds like there’s a nervous Ryan Pace, Chicago’s General Manager, walking the floors at night: Matt, I need to look good with the Trubisky pick…OK?  Even so, Mr. Pace needs to get more talent around Trubisky before Nagy’s Svengali effect can occur.  As for Nagy’s defensive capabilities, it’s been widely reported that the Bears are very much hoping to retain their current defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.  Though there are already potential philosophical differences in the team’s defensive scheme.  As in, should the team go with a 3-4 or a 4-3?

“Again, again, that’s something we’re really going to start hammering out right here,” Nagy said. “We don’t know that just yet. It’s a valid question, because there are benefits to both. One thing to keep in mind is, everyone keeps talking about 3-4 or 4-3 but 60 percent of the game is played in sub defenses.”

Kudos should go to Chicago for at least hiring a someone from outside of the main pack of coaches that everyone else is interviewing.  So maybe they are the smartest guys in the room after all.  The same was also thought when the Giants hired Ben McAdoo however.  Nevertheless, Nagy wasn’t really a name that came up much, unlike the two descendants of the Belichick family tree, Matt Patricia and Josh McDaniels who are being wooed all over, or Pat Shurmur, Minnesota’s Offensive Coordinator, who’s more of a mystery as to why he’s such a hot prospect.

Nagy seems like a good man, but by starting off with an apology grates against the soul of this once storied team.  They need someone big; someone that commands the attention of everyone present.  A Monster of the Midway.  These Bears haven’t been mean for an entire generation, and Nagy just seems too darn nice.  

The Glory Days.  Richard Dent #95 mauling Phil Simms #11 in 1985