Former QB Has A Sobering Coach Comparison For Matt Nagy

Matt Nagy was hired to do two things when the Chicago Bears made him their head coach. One was win games. This he's done fairly well for the most part. The other is to produce a viable, competitive NFL offense. That is not something that has materialized. So far in his tenure, the Bears have ranked 21st and 29th in total offense. This season they rank 24th through four games. It's left people grasping for answers as to why. For the longest time, experts wanted to blame the quarterback. Mitch Trubisky just couldn't see the field. Complex defenses easily confused him. The tape reflected this constantly. So Nagy finally made the switch to Nick Foles. He's a veteran with much better field vision and football intelligence. Only that didn't work either. The Bears offense looked worse than ever on Sunday against Indianapolis. Granted, the Colts defense is one of the best in the league but there were several things about the game plan and play calling that was difficult to understand. Former quarterback Sage Rosenfels thinks there may be a fundamental flaw with Nagy as he told Dan Bernstein of 670 The Score.

"Chicago runs almost no play action. There was a play...it was 2nd and 2. The Bears go shotgun on that play. I think he (Foles) gets sacked or the ball gets batted down. Those are great opportunities to go play action. If you want to take a shot, go play action. If you want to throw the ball deep, it's hard to do that in just straight shotgun. It just is. The offensive linemen don't like it. The hardest thing to do for an offense in the NFL is drop-back passes."

Rosenfels said the Bears used it to some success early in the game, particularly on a big throw to Allen Robinson in the 2nd quarter. The problem is they didn't do it enough and just don't do it enough period.

It actually reminds him of another offensive style he's seen before.

"We're seeing the Green Bay Packers. Life has gotten really easy for Aaron Rodgers. He used to be one of these guys for years with Mike McCarthy up there. Man, shotgun on 1st down. Shotgun and spread them out because you had this magician at quarterback. Well, it made it really hard and they weren't winning a lot of football games. Now all of a sudden they switched their offense to this more run, play action-type scheme and Rodgers is playing some of the best football of his career. I wish Chicago would do that. It's not what they do."

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This criticism of Matt Nagy does hold some water

This was an interesting point, but is there truth to it? I did some digging. Last season, the Bears threw 125 play action passes. A total of 12 quarterbacks had more than that. What makes it more interesting is that seven of those QBs threw as many or fewer total passes than the Bears quarterbacks combined. Here's an example. Jacoby Brissett was the starter for Indianapolis last season. He threw 447 total passes with 126 coming off play action. While his numbers weren't great, he still managed 18 touchdowns to eight interceptions and an 88.0 passer rating. All numbers that were better than Trubisky.

It gets even better.

The Bears started out this season running a lot more play action than normal. Of his 86 attempts, Trubisky threw 31 of them off a play fake. That changed drastically when Nick Foles went in. Of the 71 passing attempts he's made thus far the past two weeks, only three have come off play action. Three. It didn't take long for the Colts to realize that Nagy grew less and less interested in even giving the illusion of running the ball as the game went along. That put more pressure on Foles to make tough throws. Everybody saw the results. For his part, Nagy has often used the excuse that the running game wasn't working. So why bother with play action? Ask Sean McVay. His Los Angeles Rams managed just 3.7 yards per carry last season. Yet they still threw 194 play action passes. His team finished with the 4th-ranked passing attack in the league. So yeah. Maybe Matt Nagy is another McCarthy. Only he doesn't have the Hall of Fame quarterbacks to hide his deficiencies.