Matt Nagy responds to controversy over Bears' kicker search

[soulman]

Matt Nagy responds to controversy over Bears' kicker search

Originally posted on Larry Brown Sports  |  By Grey Papke  |  Last updated 8/21/19

 

The Chicago Bears faced controversy on Wednesday after a Sports Illustrated story quoted several anonymous kickers who tried out for the Bears.

SI’s Kalyn Kahler quoted several Bears tryout kickers who were critical of the process. They suggested that coach Matt Nagy was obsessed with Cody Parkey’s 43-yard miss that cost the team a playoff game and even made kickers watch video of it before they tried out. They also said there was a negative mood from the organization and criticized kicking consultant Jamie Kohl for both his “alpha” demeanor and favoring those who had kicked at one of his camps.

Nagy defended the organization from those critics when asked about them Wednesday.

“I understand — we brought in a lot of kickers that came in here,” Nagy said, via Jeff Dickerson of ESPN. “To me, I look at it as a positive, in the fact that we said we’re going to turn over every stone to find whoever’s out there. We felt like we, at that point in time, when we brought in a bunch of kickers, we’re going to test them all out and see what they can do.

“And then, within that time frame, we also put in some situations with the Augusta silence early on to see how they could handle it. Is it exactly the perfect science? I don’t know that, maybe not … I just really like how we’re going through this thing. [Bears general manager] Ryan [Pace] and I talk about no regrets, right?”

We got a glimpse of Nagy’s obsessiveness when he made tryout kickers replicate Parkey’s 43-yard attempt in front of the entire team, with poor results. It sounds like there were some legitimate gripes about the process that aren’t a great look for the coach.

[soulman]

Sounds to me more like there are quite a few whiners who didn't appreciate Nagy and Pace's approach.

Hey Larry Brown Sports.  I really don't think Nagy gives a damn about how it looked as long as it produced the desired result.

There are no prizes in the NFL for style and appearance only for winning the Super Bowl.

[AZBearsFan]

Agree about the whiners. The whole point was that it was supposed to be trying. It was supposed to be stressful. It was supposed to have unusual pressures to overcome. Kicking in the NFL is about performing under significant pressure time and time again. You can’t replicate game pressure in May, so you do what you can. I for one appreciate the outside the box nature of it all, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s how it played out. That’s Nagy. He’s unconventional. 

I won’t go as far as to say the process wasn’t obsessive and unorthodox, but that is his and Pace’s job - do whatever you can and have to do to find the best candidate. 

I will go so far as to say that the media pointing fingers and crying obsession has a lot of projection to it. IT IS ALL THEY WRITE ABOUT. We are getting charted conversion ratios from practices from bloggers and every beat reporter, and rookie kickers are being asked for weekly press conferences in the frickin’ preseason for God’s sake. Nagy isn’t doing any of that. THEY are.

Even after the kicking competition has been over for almost a week now there’s a different article every GD day about how it’s not really over. Nagy sure made it seem like it is to me yesterday. He sounded to me like Pineiro is his guy until he shows he shouldn’t be. He isn’t the one driving the “kickers can’t miss” bus. MEDIA are and fans are. Media and fans are the ones pushing that he preferred Vedvik to Fry or Pineiro too. Reality is that the only thing we know for sure is that he and Pace wanted a better look at Vedvik. That we offered only a conditional pick for him suggests that they were only trading anything for him if he came in and then won the job. I think that the fact that we were not willing to trade a guaranteed pick for Vedvik is a statement of some confidence in Pineiro to be honest. If it were already decided he was insufficient they would have gone full measure after someone else. They didn’t and haven’t, and now Nagy is having to remind the media that kickers aren’t perfect and that he won’t hold them to that impossible standard. 

But narratives about obsessiveness and page clicks and what not. Look in the mirror already. At this point it seems to me Nagy is the one with the logical outlook on this. 

[soulman]

Just wait 'til the next issue.

It's on UDFA who didn't make the roster and feel they were just used by unsympathetic coaches to further their own success. 

[AZBearsFan]

Honestly the biggest perk of this whole kicking thing is that it has probably to at least some extent lessened the constant pressure articles put out on Mitch by the media. It’s still definitely there and still significant, but without the kicking sideshow everything about them would be a Mitch pressure article which, like those about the kickers, would make a difficult job even more difficult unnecessarily.