Lessons for Matt Nagy from Conference Title Games
Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy no doubt watched with glee as Andy Reid won the AFC championship.
He was busy in the previous week or so reorganizing the offensive coaching staff, but seeing his mentor get another shot at his first Lombardi Trophy has to rank only slightly below getting the chance for this himself in Chicago.
Beyond seeing the Chiefs make the Super Bowl with a coaching staff he knows well, there was also a lesson involved for Nagy.
There was also one in the NFC championship game.
The one from the AFC title game had nothing to do with Patrick Mahomes or his slick passes to Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. It pays to have a quarterback like Mahomes is definitely advisable, but that chance already went out the window.
The lesson Nagy should really know by now that was very apparent was: Run the football.
The Chiefs might seem an unlikely source for this lesson, but it was right there for all to see.
Kansas City got the lead by passing or with scrambling from Mahomes. Reid knew enough to put the game out of reach by running.
Perhaps he remembered what happened in the 2017 playoffs when Nagy was offensive coordinator and the Chiefs were accused afterward of not running enough once they had the lead in a loss to Tennessee.
They weren't losing a lead to Tennessee this game and after running only six times in the first half they began to run in the second half after getting the lead.
The Chiefs had 10 first downs rushing to four by Derrick Henry and the Titans. They ran it eight out of the first 10 plays on a drive of 13 plays to Damien Williams' 3-yard touchdown to take a 28-17 lead, and there was no way the Titans were coming back.
The Titans got outrushed 112 yards to 85. The Chiefs outrushed them 69 yards to 19 in the second half.
The old football saying is pass to score, run to win. It was never more it still applies.
This leads to the second game, the 49ers' 37-20 beating of the Green Bay Packers in a game not as close as the final score indicated.
No one is suggesting to Nagy to pass only eight times like the 49ers did. This is the kind of thing John Fox's team did. They actually ran it seven times and won once against Cam Newton and the Panthers with Mitchell Trubisky at quarterback.
But the lesson from the 49ers game is never be afraid to keep running if it's working. With 42 runs for 285 yards, there was no doubt it was working.
"We had an idea going in we were going in, we were hoping for something like that going in," 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters afterward about the heavy reliance on the run. "But you never plan for it to be like that. We were watching how the guys were running and everything and watching how our defense was playing. It made it very easy to stick with."
The Bears too often abandoned the run this past season, and sometimes the running game was one to abandon because they didn't get it blocked. If you don't give it a chance, it will never develop.
And if it's working, there's no sense straying away from it.
Too often it seemed the Bears did stray from it when it worked simply because they had this desire to try out all the plays they could simply to get to other things in their game plan.
It might not look pretty, but the running game is essential, even to a pass-happy team like the Chiefs or the Bears.
The need to run the ball better should have been front and center when Nagy and GM Ryan Pace talked about their offseason plans. It wasn't.
No one uttered the phrase "we need to run better," except Bears board chairman George McCaskey.
The closest they came to it was Nagy mentioning it almost in passing.
"Part of the process for us as we move through this thing is looking at really specifically all parts of the game, whether it's two-minute mode, whether it's the no-huddle stuff, whether it's the run game, the identity, then the red zone," Nagy said.
The lessons learned from championship Sunday should put the running game a little higher on that priority list. Otherwise, the Bears are doomed to repeat their mediocre 2019 season.
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