Pulling Together These Bears Requires Skill
The Chicago Bears paint a perplexing picture for 2021.
Coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace hold their state of the team address on Tuesday when players report for training camp. They'll describe with optimism a team determined after making changes to the roster and correcting strategic errors.
It's hard to imagine Nagy not optimistic. It's one of his great strengths.
They'll point to a defense so strong for the past three seasons, and the change at quarterback to Andy Dalton. They'll no doubt speak about the raw energy infusion of quarterback Justin Fields, and getting him ready to play in the NFL.
The opposite side of all this exists, as well. They'll try to avoid these topics as the season is just beginning. No sense dwelling on the negative.
The view from a distance indicates something in between. It's a franchise torn in different directions, a team branching out in too many different ways from what should be a unified core moving in the same direction.
It's up to Nagy and his coaching staff to pull all of this together and redirect it toward the desired destination atop the NFC North.
At stake is more than a win-loss record. It could mean careers. It could also mean another year wasted for some of football's most loyal fans.
Coaching
The entire defensive coaching staff is different, except for secondary coach Deshea Townsend. A few faces are familiar, but they're in different roles. Even new defensive coordinator Sean Desai can't say he has done his job in the past for this team or another in the NFL.
Most teams have to deal with wholesale staff change when the staff is forming. Nagy had to do this in his fourth year, coming off a playoff berth but not a winning season. He's had to do it before on offense.
It doesn't make for an ideal situation because the best coaches want security and go where they can find it. Those willing to live on the edge or who can't get hired elsewhere will sign on with a head coach who could be on shaky ground.
Is Matt Nagy on shaky ground? Oddsmakers at Bovada have moved him into the top slot for most likely to be fired or quit first this year.
The staff assembled under Desai looks inexperienced. They lost successful veteran line coach Jay Rodgers and brought in Chris Rumph, a longtime college line coach who has been in the NFL one season.
Former coordinator Chuck Pagano had Desai coaching safeties, and now with Desai as coordinator they've hired Mike Adams for safeties. He hasn't coached and was playing in the NFL two years ago.
When the Bears defense hit its monstrous stride in 2018, the coaching staff was in its fourth year together.
Offensive Direction
Although the offensive staff remains intact, a real strategic split existed last year and no one can be sure they've found the solution.
The offense thrived when it ran the ball well. They didn't run well until they went back to Mitchell Trubisky at quarterback. In fact, they were awful, last in the league, until they moved him around more and used plenty of misdirection with bootleg action to occupy defenses. Then they also went to more outside zone blocking schemes like the popular Mike/Kyle Shanahan style of offense being used in the league more and more.
This isn't the initial direction Nagy wanted to take the team. It meant more snaps from under center and fewer bootlegs, but the offensive line was more effective. It was also a revamped line with Sam Mustipher at center and Germain Ifedi at right tackle.
However, almost all of the success they had with this approach came against weaker defenses. When they went up against better defenses the results were not a great deal better than their traditional Kansas City/West Coast approach using the shotgun.
Was the better result from their change in strategies? Was it from the weaker opponents? Was success from having a quarterback who could run and occupy the attention of defenses so much that it opened up the running game?
So what are they using this year?
Logically they should stick with what works and not the old approach, but Nagy would be swallowing his pride a bit to do this.
Add in the fact that each quarterback they have seems better suited to different approaches. Fields is mobile, even more mobile than Trubisky was. Dalton is relatively cemented in place like Nick Foles.
Tack onto all of this the play-calling drama. Nagy quit doing it when they were in the midst of a six-game losing streak. They lost three more games after he turned it over to offensive coordinator Bill Lazor, before winning three straight to make the playoffs.
Nagy has returned to calling plays. Why is he better now than before, if he is? The answer will need to come in the regular season when we find out if they've determined what strategy and what offensive line grouping actually works against good defenses.
Personnel Puzzle
This is not a young team moving forward in unison toward some great goal in the near future, like the Cleveland Browns or Buffalo Bills.
It's very much a veteran team mixed with extreme inexperience. This kind of mix is more likely to collapse in a heap than one full of younger players moving forward together, though too much youth is also an invitation to disaster.
Teven Jenkins, Cole Kmet, David Montgomery, Darnell Mooney, Sam Mustipher, Jaylon Johnson, James Daniels, Roquan Smith, Anthony Miller and Bilal Nichols are starters or part-time starters with three seasons or less experience. The bulk of the rest of the starters or part-time starters are players longer of tooth, like Dalton, Robert Quinn, Akiem Hicks, Tashaun Gipson, Desmond Trufant, Jimmy Graham and Danny Trevathan.
An ideal, winning team hitting stride would be comprised mostly of home-grown players in their primes—years four, five, six and seven—with a few aging veterans and some youth.
The Bears have Eddie Jackson, Khalil Mack, Eddie Goldman, Allen Robinson, Cody Whitehair and Germain Ifedi from the group with four to seven years of experience. But they had to import Mack, Robinson and Ifedi. They weren't drafted.
This current Bears mix speaks to the utter failure Pace had drafting before he had Nagy as his coach from 2015-17.
Apparently he hasn't been entirely successful since then because they just sent Anthony Miller out of town.
The Bears seemingly succeeded over the past three drafts, and possibly this year. Come back and look at this group in two years and it could look ideal, with a stronger core and fewer aging players.
For now, though, it resembles a taped-together used car.
The Ultimate Dichotomy
Of course, with the Bears it always comes down to quarterback. They never have a good situation here.
This year they have Fields, the future of the franchise and a cause for civic pride.
Instead of giving fans the raw, unbridled joy of seeing their rookie lead and learn, they are going to play an aging Dalton. He is years removed from effective play. None of his teams have had a winning record since 2015.
They have to play a veteran who might give them a chance to avoid rookie mistakes and win because the coaching staff and the general manager are not sitting in a good place for their futures. They must win now. They must get a playoff win, team CEO Ted Phillips said.
After last season ended, Phillips and board chairman George McCaskey told everyone how pleased they were with the collaboration of Pace and Nagy.
If they were so pleased, and knowing they were going to get a young quarterback, wouldn't the ideal situation then have been to simply give out contract extensions to the coach and GM, and then after the draft tell Nagy he could play Fields to his heart's content without worrying about losses in 2021?
If they really were pleased with Pace and Nagy, it would have made sense.
If they weren't really pleased, they should have simply fired both and let the new coach and new GM have their new QB from Day 1.
Instead, they're going to restrict the quarterback's first-year development based on the short-sighted approach of trying to win a few games this season with a second-hand type of roster that has a ceiling of making the playoffs at 9-8 and losing the first game.
As you go over the top looking down at this franchise—the bird's-eye view—you'd have to swear you saw this all before on another fly-over.
It's because you did.
It was four years ago and the characters involved were Trubisky, Mike Glennon and John Fox.
Misery and history seem to repeat themselves with this football team and the reason is obvious.
It comes from ownership's decision-making.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
