Where Pace, Nagy, key Bears stand before playoffs
Matt Nagy was still processing his emotions when he hopped on his final postgame Zoom of the regular season following the Bears’ 35-16 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.“You guys (the media) are just getting me right now like an hour after the game, so I apologize if I'm not all balloons everywhere,” Nagy said. “But tomorrow, it's going to be energetic.”Welcome to the world of backing into the playoffs, I guess.We’ll get into next weekend’s matchup with the New Orleans Saints later, though. For now, I want to focus on what this result means for the futures of five people: Matt Nagy, Ryan Pace, Ted Phillips, Mitch Trubisky and Chuck Pagano.
Nagy’s job was already safe before the Bears lost and still made the postseason. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that news Sunday morning; it was always unlikely Nagy would be fired while eight games over .500 in his first three years in Chicago. For Nagy to be fired after the 2020 season, the Bears needed to be an unmitigated disaster – which looked possible during their six-game losing streak, after all.
A playoff appearance is not what happens to a team that’s a complete you-know-what-show.
And while George McCaskey needs to ask some tough questions to Nagy – like why this season required a last-ditch turnaround and help from the Rams and 49ers to make the playoffs in the first place – firing a head coach three years into a five-year contract when he’s made the playoffs twice in that span is not business in which many owners will engage.
Even an owner that puts an added emphasis on beating a team – the Packers – Nagy is 1-5 against in his career.
“Anything can happen once you get into the playoffs,” Nagy said. “Anything.”
Prior to the season – the last time McCaskey was available to the media – he said something that could feel prescient right about now.
“The goal every year is to win the Super Bowl,” McCaskey said. “Two years ago we made a great run, fell short. Last year we regressed so we need to find out which team it is.
“Is it the team that took the NFL by storm two years ago or is it the team that fell back last year?”
Well, the Bears went 8-8 again. This time they made the playoffs – thanks to an expanded postseason. It does seem clear the answer to McCaskey’s question: The Bears are much close to the team that regressed in 2019 than they are the team that took the NFC North by storm in 2018.
But it also stands to reason that if Nagy’s job is safe, Pace will be back in 2021, too.
“With that particular position, it’s one of leadership, primarily,” McCaskey said when asked before the season on what Pace will be evaluated. “He’s in charge of the entire football operation. So that’s a factor. Winning, of course, is part of the assessment. And then his personnel, his supervision of the personnel department, scouting department.”
Part of Pace’s leadership has been helping steer the Bears through the minefield of playing a season in the midst of a pandemic. While the Bears didn’t keep COVID-19 completely out of Halas Hall, they did not have the kind of full-scale outbreaks seen in Baltimore or Tennessee or Cleveland. Surely the work Pace put in alongside Nagy and infection control officer/head trainer Andre Tucker will be a positive part of McCaskey’s evaluation of Pace.
The Bears entrusted Pace with plenty of input in their multi-million-dollar renovations of Halas Hall, too. That stuff matters.
Is it enough to overcome the aftershocks of picking the wrong quarterback in 2017 – and then picking the wrong replacement for (with help from Nagy) for him in 2020? Is it enough to overcome investing truckloads of cash into a defense that’s regressed over the last two years? Is it enough to overcome the faults in this roster exposed during this year’s six-game losing streak?
But another thing to consider here: There are six GM openings around the NFL; interviews for most of those openings have already begun, or will begin this week. And the Bears’ pool of potential replacements for Pace would then be limited to candidates who’d be willing to stick with Nagy in 2021.
If you’ve already made up your mind that the Bears need to fire Pace, none of this is going to change your viewpoint. I get it. But since McCaskey evaluates everything at the end of each season, there’s a good chance his viewpoint may have changed since Thanksgiving.
Unless Phillips retires – our friend David Kaplan reported he may consider it – he’s going to have a role with the Bears. He’s on the team’s board of directors and has been trusted by the McCaskey family for decades.
But the thought here is maybe Phillips is re-assigned and a new, football-oriented team president is hired. Or he remains as team president but a high-ranking football job is created alongside him – similar to the Cubs’ structure with Crane Kenney running business operations and Jed Hoyer (formerly Theo Epstein) running baseball operations.
NBC Sports Chicago colleague Adam Hoge made a good point in his postgame column – another week to evaluate this situation should be beneficial for ownership, especially if they’re considering what would be viewed as a major change inside the walls of Halas Hall.
Ultimately, the Bears are still well behind the Packers in the NFC North. A backdoor playoff appearance does not change the gulf between these two historic rivals. And this franchise, for almost the entirety of Phillips' tenure as team president, has been stuck behind Green Bay - to the point where the Packers now have a six-win lead in the all time series between these two bitter rivals.
Only seven of Trubisky’s 42 passes traveled more than 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage against the Packers. He completed one deep shot to Darnell Mooney for 53 yards and was picked off by Adrian Amos on another; otherwise, this was firmly a dink-and-dunk, high-percentage-throw gameplan for Trubisky.
It was a showcase of Trubisky’s limitations, and a reminder that, yes, the defenses the 2017 No. 2 overall pick lit up over the last month were among the worst in the NFL.
But what’ll matter more for Trubisky will be next Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints. The Saints have one of the two or three best defenses in the NFL, making it not only a playoff test for Trubisky, but a major referendum on his late-season resurgence.
"This is what you work for," Trubisky said. "This season didn't go the way we envisioned it. But you have new opportunity. Really know that matters. You just got to take advantage of the opportunity. I'm very grateful for that.
"... Just the way this season went, all the ups and downs and everything in between, us being in the position we're in now, we're very fortunate. A lot of that is credit to the team sticking together and hard work across the board. We earned this and we got to take advantage of it. I'm looking forward to it."
The problem for the Bears is their options in free agency, the trade market and NFL Draft will be severely limited by a meager amount of cap space and a draft pick no higher than 19th overall. The Bears may believe they can’t do better than Trubisky and try to bring him back. It might not feel particularly exciting, but it might also be the only choice they have.
Again, we’ll see how Trubisky looks in his second career playoff start. But he won’t be heading into the Superdome with much momentum.
Only three teams – the Bills, Ravens and Dolphins – invested more cap space into their defenses in 2020 than the Bears ($88.6 million). No team has more cap space allocated to defense in 2021 than the Bears’ $117.5 million – 64 percent of their cap space.
That number can and will change with cuts, extensions, restructures, etc. But the Bears look likely to be at or near the top of the NFL in defense spending again in 2021.
So the standards for this defense should be incredibly high. You don’t spend all this money to give up 76 points in two games against the Packers.
That makes defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano, then, perhaps the most likely of this group to not return next year. The regression of the Bears’ defense after the off week has been stark and troubling; the blitz call that left Danny Trevathan in coverage with Marquez Valdes-Scantling, leading to a 72-yard touchdown, felt like an unfortunate icing on the cake for Pagano’s defense. He finally blitzed; it just turned out the blitz left an aging inside linebacker in one-on-one coverage against the fastest receiver on the Packers.
It’s not apples-to-apples, but the Rams made a bold move last offseason in parting ways with well-respected defensive coordinator Wade Phillips – and replacing him with the young, unproven Brandon Staley. It’s worked out great in Los Angeles, and Staley may wind up a head coach this year or next because of his work.
We’ll see if Nagy feels that kind of bold action is necessary once the Bears’ playoff run is over. But Sunday’s loss to the Packers did not reflect well on Pagano. Especially with all the money the Bears invested in the players he coordinates.
