soulman Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 (edited) Greenberg: The Bears are the family you want to avoid on Thanksgiving By Jon Greenberg Nov 24, 2021 44 Forget the one-source stories and the Bears’ masterful skill of making an awkward situation a PR disaster and focus on these numbers: 15 and 65. In the last three seasons, the Bears, under current head coach Matt Nagy, have had three long losing streaks that add up to 15 games and counting. Since the 2019 season began, Nagy’s Bears have lost 23 times. So 65 percent of the Bears’ losses under Nagy have come in three discrete losing streaks, including the five-game skid that has the Bears spinning out of control. These losing streaks are an annual tradition, a torpedoing of a season, and they illustrate a coaching staff ill-equipped to adjust to the normal challenges of an NFL season. These regular nosedives reveal a team without a plan after it gets hit in the mouth. This annual slide to mediocrity shows why the Bears are a civic punchline, year after year after year. Last January, team president Ted Phillips and chairman George McCaskey praised Matt Nagy, Ryan Pace and company for showing resilience during the team’s six-game losing streak. That’s how low the bar is set in Lake Forest. And you want these guys to be in charge of a billion-dollar construction project? The Bears have a very good chance to end this current losing streak Thursday afternoon in Detroit against a winless Lions team. And yes, I think they’ll do it with Andy Dalton as quarterback and Nagy as head coach. Beating the Lions isn’t like asking your dog to cook a Thanksgiving turkey. It’s like asking it to eat the scraps that fall on the floor. The Bears are only three-point favorites. Then again, they were only a three-point favorite the last time the teams played on Oct. 3, a game the Bears won by 10. Since that game, the Bears have one more win than the Lions. At 3-7, the Bears are headed for Nagy’s first losing season and, likely, his last. No one expected this season to go well. That’s why everyone was clamoring for change last offseason. The surprise drafting of Justin Fields changed the conversation and put the focus on No. 1’s development and a possible bright future. With Fields out this week, the focus is on Nagy, thanks to a very shaky story that came out Tuesday that declared Nagy had already been told of his firing. While that important part doesn’t seem to be true, the institutional confusion that followed is very accurate. Bears chairman George McCaskey is also a fan. But is he a good owner? (Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press) As an organization, the Bears, as The Athletic’s Kevin Fishbain wrote, don’t address rumors, even when they turn into distractions. That’s how you get special-teams coach Chris Tabor being the first person to answer questions about Nagy’s job status. That’s how you get Nagy answering questions about his own immediate future at a news conference without much information to go on. Nagy isn’t quite as skilled as he thinks he is at obfuscation, so this was a tall order for him. After all, he can’t say for sure if or when he’s going to get fired. Nagy can barely manage his timeouts. He’s the guy who bumbled the communication about starting Fields for months. I don’t mind him, but he really needs to get out of his own way sometimes. Maybe that’s why he was perfect for the Bears, who always seem to find themselves in a rhetorical quagmire. They would’ve done themselves a big favor by at least telling the beat writers on Tuesday that Nagy hasn’t been told he was fired this week along with some vague public statement about how “There are seven games left in the season and any decisions will be made at the appropriate time” or something along those lines. On Wednesday, McCaskey spoke to the team to ease the tension. Dan Pompei @danpompei Source: George McCaskey addressed the Bears players and coaches today and told them there was no truth to the report that Matt Nagy will be fired after the game Thursday. 1:44 PM · Nov 24, 2021·Twitter Web App We all know Nagy’s on thin ice and he should be fired after the season. He was brought in as an offensive guru and his team can’t score points. In 63.3 percent of the games the Bears have played under Nagy, they’ve scored two or fewer offensive touchdowns. Of the 15 aforementioned losses in the last three seasons, 12 came in games in which they scored two or fewer touchdowns, including all five this season. (In one game in which they scored three touchdowns, a 41-25 loss to the Packers last season, they scored two touchdowns at the end of the game while battling a 31-point deficit.) Given that Pace should be afraid for his job, too, maybe that complicated the line of communication Tuesday. Pace, who often sits in the road press boxes with reporters, only deigns to talk to us on the record before and after the season. Who are we to question such a successful executive? It’s not a reach for me to write that both Pace and Nagy should be fired after the season. While this merry-go-round of hiring and firing isn’t healthy, neither is the status quo. Pace has made some solid moves and I respect his big swings, but there’s no reason to give him a chance to hire another head coach with his record. Of course, McCaskey operates on a different wavelength. While owners are best when they delegate the many tasks of running a professional team and stay in the suites, fans still look to them for stability. The players and coaches and everyone else affiliated with a team do, too. McCaskey, the team’s chairman, is a guy you want as your next-door neighbor. He’s a nice fella and a diehard Bears fan. It would be nice if the McCaskeys were raised like the Rooneys of Pittsburgh to be a competent football family. Maybe in a few generations. I guess it’s fitting this chaos is all happening now. For the lucky (or unlucky, I suppose) among us, Thanksgiving is a time for getting together with family and for Bears, that includes watching a football game Thursday afternoon. But with the Bears serving up their usual poorly-cooked, unseasoned feast, you can forgive these fans for asking to be excused from the table. Everyone has had enough. Edited November 25, 2021 by soulman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulman Posted November 25, 2021 Author Share Posted November 25, 2021 1 minute ago, soulman said: Source: George McCaskey addressed the Bears players and coaches today and told them there was no truth to the report that Matt Nagy will be fired after the game Thursday. Maybe this is like a riddle. He didn't say he wouldn't be fired on Friday.....or on Monday. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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