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Following a forgettable Sunday in Cleveland, many fans from around the league are left confused as to how Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy continues to have a job. He was introduced to Bears fans as the offensive genius that would finally bring the sort of creativity and firepower needed to win in today’s NFL. Instead he has overlooked an offensive that struggles to even get first downs, making the chance of scoring seem like a distant dream.
Reaching New Levels Of Bad
On Sunday against the Cleveland Browns the Bears offense ran 42 plays, and only managed to gain a total of 47 net yards. If you just lined up and ran the same running play up the middle 42 times it should result in a total greater than 47 net yards. Sure Justin Fields is a rookie and was making his first start, but what happened against the Browns had nothing to do with rookie jitters or mistakes. What we saw was a team without a plan, or simply a team lacking confidence in their own plan. Either way, how long can the team let this utter shit-show continue?
The 2018 Bears Offense = Overrated
One of the potential reasons that Matt Nagy has been able to hold on to his job as long as he has is likely the offensive success he had in 2018, which was his first season as head coach of the Chicago Bears.
Stats Can Be Misleading
The Chicago Bears offense finished ranked 9th overall in scoring during the 2018 season, on their way to finishing the season with 12 wins. With this level of offensive production in Nagy’s first year, many thought the Bears finally found the answer.
Despite finishing ranked 9th in scoring, the team’s offense finished 21st overall in yards gained. The 2018 Chicago Bears defense was on another level, finishing the season ranked #1 in points allowed and 3rd in yards allowed.
In other words, the Bears offense often had an advantage in the field position battle, enabling their offense to capitalize by consistently scoring on shorter drives.
Deeper Data Analysis Tells The True Story
A quick look at Pro Football Reference’s Simple Rating System (SRS) that measures a teams performance relative to the rest of the league. The numbers in the table represent the number of times greater than or less than average the team was for a given category.
SoS – Strength of schedule
SRS – Overall SRS (Combined ODRS+DSRS)
OSRS – Offensive Simple Rating Score
DSRS – Defensive Simple Rating Score
Each of the scores represents how a team performed (Yds & Pts) relative to the rest of the league. So in 2018 the Bears Defense was 4.8x better than league average.
According to the data in table above, the Bears benefitted from having a Strength of Schedule that was 2.3x easier than/below the league average. In addition to that, it is easy to see that the team was being carried by the defense. A defense that has gotten worse and worse each and every year with Matt Nagy as coach, which is not a trend Bears’ fans want to see. Time for the Chicago Bears to move on.
Sports Media Consensus Both Locally & Nationally
It’s not as if the world of sports media actually has the power or authority to dictate specific hirings and/or firings, though a case could be made that constant attention on a specific topic could potentially factor into future decision-making with enough exposure.
Time will tell if that is truly the case in regards to Matt Nagy, as seemingly every sports media outlet is calling for his immediate removal following an embarrassing showing in which the team looked unprepared and unprofessional.
So Bad It Really Seems Like A Joke At This Point
Big Cat has a valid point here. If you simply assume Matt Nagy is trying to be this bad it does make it much more entertaining as you realize he is absolutely dominating the league in his own way.
