Matt Nagy Thinks Bears Players Got Too Content in 2019

There is a common pitfall that teams who win for the first time in a long time can often run into. They do so well during a season and look like contenders. It convinces them they have everything figured out and so don't think they need to do anything different or better the next season. They made it. Sure enough, as the NFL always does, it slaps them back to reality the next year. Matt Nagy seems to think this is what happened to the Chicago Bears in 2019.

The hype around the team going into the season was real. They'd gone 12-4 in 2018 and came a missed field goal away from knocking off the defending champions in the playoffs. It was time to start thinking about the Super Bowl. Then as the season unfolded, it became clear something was off. The urgency and edge the Bears had played with the year before just didn't seem like it was there.

During his press conference at the scouting combine, Nagy revealed his belief that a lot of that was because certain players weren't playing with a chip on their shoulder mentality. They'd grown content. That is why he doesn't want anybody to feel comfortable coming into 2020.

"I want everybody to feel that way. If you don't, you feel content and play content. You don't play with that chip...I had a lot of different individual talks with players and I'm not going to get into who they are...but there are some guys that can play with more of a chip on their shoulder. That's the part, for me, that going into this year, I want to see if they have that chip."

Matt Nagy sounds like he's done being the nice guy

By the sound of things, it would seem Bears players might be seeing a little bit more of that "dark side" Nagy has talked about in the past. The changes to the coaching staff last month certainly reflect a shift in thinking. It seems like there will be a more disciplined approach moving forward. One focused on attention to detail. Something new offensive line coach Juan Castillo and quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo are well-known for.

The first thing that must be done in order to fix the offense is making sure to eliminate their own mistakes. Half the problem for the Bears last year was them constantly shooting themselves in the foot with ill-timed penalties, dropped passes, and just bad execution. Nagy seems dead set on getting all of that cleaned up before even thinking about adding new faces to the roster.