Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy will take a hard pass on surrendering play-calling duties.
Nagy and the Bears are mired in a slump of growing proportion and significance, and the chorus is growing louder for a shift — either at quarterback or play-caller.
Nagy called plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, a role head coach Andy Reid surrendered, before being selected as coach of the Bears.
“What I would say is this,” Nagy said, adding that if he identifies play-calling as a problem, “I’ll be the first to tell you, then we need to be better or if there’s a rhythm to something. I have zero ego and I have zero care of giving play-call duties to somebody else. I really do not care about that, and if that’s what we feel like from going through it that that’s what we need to do, then I would do that, I really would.
“But when you go through the tape and you look at things and you know schematically where we’re at and what we’re calling and when we’re calling it. … There’s without a doubt a few plays in that game that I would go back and say, ‘You know what, that’s our fault. We didn’t scheme it right,’ and that starts with me. And I need to be able to accept that and know how do I fix that. But we’ll do everything we can … we’re turning over every stone to get this thing right.”
At 4-6, the Bears are longshots to get back to the playoffs after winning the NFC North in 2018 in Nagy’s inaugural season in Chicago.
Averaging only 16.9 points per game, only the Washington Redskins are scoring less in the NFC (12.5 ppg). The Bears rank 28th in the NFL in scoring.
In last week’s 17-7 loss to the Rams, Nagy pulled quarterback Mitchell Trubisky but said his health — not performance — was the reason Chase Daniel entered the game.
“When you’re not a part of it and you don’t really know what’s going on, I’m not questioning what people are thinking,” Nagy said. “I’m just telling you exactly what happened. I can’t be more honest than that. We knew there was pain and we had to monitor that the entire second half. You’ll see it when you watch the tape, on almost every play, you’ll see where it’s affecting him.”
The Bears host the New York Giants on Sunday in Week 12, then visit the Detroit Lions for a Thanksgiving Day game four days later.
