Painful Bears loss ranks high among worst under Matt Nagy
On the day after the Bears looked more like a team in a trance, Matt Nagy pointed at last year with hopes of refocusing everyone.
"This game reminds me a little bit last year of the feeling that we had after Miami," Nagy told reporters in London before the team departed. "That was a point in our season where our guys, they rallied after that game and we ended up making a run later in the season.
"We have high-character guys who will figure this thing out."
The Dolphins and Bears killer Brock Osweiler last year ended the Bears' 3-1 start to the season in Week 6. There was more similarity than the records and the point in the schedule. Miami gave the Bears defense a big dose of smash-mouth football with Frank Gore's running for 101 yards, and the Raiders pounded it at them for 123 yards by Josh Jacobs.
The Bears came into that game off a bye, and in Sunday's game they came in after a flight to London 48 hours earlier.
"It's all right every now and then to have a little kick in the ass, and I'm OK with that,” Nagy told reporters. "They deserve that. We deserve that."
Nagy sounded like someone who is going to be doing his own butt kicking when the Bears return to Halas Hall, although they don't do it now until next week because it's their bye and they've given the players off this week.
"We have a happy-go-lucky attitude around the building. We have fun," Nagy said. "Every now and then, though, you need to be able to show a dark side. And they need to see that and feel that. It just so happened that yesterday was one of those days that they felt it. I know they felt it.
"I had to do that last year, too. It's just coming a little bit earlier (this year),” Nagy said. "That's where we're at. I really trust and appreciate who these guys are as people. And I trust that they’re going to figure out a way, along with us (coaches) what the answers are. And we stick together. We're 3-2. We're at a point now where we're going to be OK. And we're going to get answers."
The only problem with recalling how the Bears are at a point similar to last year, is it works both ways. You need to look at what happened after last year's Miami road disaster.
After they made a hall of famer out of Osweiler and helped the Dolphins' running game look like the Larry Csonka era powerhouse, they immediately lost a close game at home to an NFL powerhouse and a predicted Super Bowl contender, the New England Patriots. Suddenly they were 3-3, a .500 team trying to figure out which way there season was going.
The next Bears game, by the way, is at home and it's against an NFL powerhouse and potential Super Bowl team, the New Orleans Saints.
Twitter@BearsOnMaven
