CHICAGO–After a fifth straight loss, the Chicago Bears appear to be in no man’s land. A Bears team that was above .500 just six weeks ago is now reeling and out of the NFC playoff picture, on the outside looking in. After Sunday’s loss, head coach Matt Nagy had one simple message for his team.
“You just keep fighting,” Nagy said. “You keep believing in each other, and you keep it real simple and you never stop fighting, that’s all you can do.”
Listening to Nagy’s message, there isn’t a lot to takeaway. The Bears had their bright moments on Sunday afternoon but never really showed up to play consistently at a high level on both sides of the ball. At the end of the day, the only silver lining was that Roquan Smith, Jaylon Johnson, Robert Quinn, and Trevis Gipson has strong performances on defense. On offense, with the Bears being forced to switch to veteran quarterback Andy Dalton, the offense struggled to find any sort of consistency.
“I just understand in the end we all care a lot and we’re all in this thing,” Nagy said after the game. “Of course, we want to do everything we can to win so that’s our job to do that. I think that everyone is competitive and wants to see the Bears win and that’s exactly what we want.”
Over the last three seasons, a prime justification for keeping Nagy as head coach is his ability to be a players coach. 10 games into the 2021 campaign and it’s clear Nagy appears to be losing the locker room.
In Chicago, as the weather gets colder and the days get darker, the winds of change need to set upon the lakefront. Messages continue to fall on deaf ears and Nagy continues to beat a dead horse, signaling that a new face needs to be sitting in the head coaches office at Halas Hall when the calendar turns to January 2022 for the Bears.