It didn’t take much of a lip-reader to see that Bears coach Matt Nagy had a sharp message for quarterback Mitchell Trubisky Monday night.
It’s also clear it hit its intended target.
ESPN cameras zoomed in on a sideline interaction between coach and quarterback in the second quarter, and Nagy clearly said ". . . [something] the f--- up.”
Whether the first obscured word (move your arm next time, assistant coach Dave Ragone) was “man,” “step,” or “shut,” doesn’t matter as much as the delivery, and the fact that Trubisky responded appropriately. Two plays later, he threw his first touchdown pass of the year.
“That’s what you want from your head coach,” Trubisky said, via J.J. Stankevitz of NBCSportsChicago.com. “You want passion, and it wasn’t anything malicious. We were just on the same page and we were getting fired up and we were just communicating and he definitely got his point across and I love to see passion out of my head coach. When you get that and, it’s really a non-issue, it’s not a big deal at all.
“It really didn’t — I didn’t even notice it at the time. We were just communicating and we ended up going down and scoring at the end of that drive, if I remember correctly, so no big deal at all and I love to see that out of coach Nags.”
Nagy has challenged Trubisky on the field before, and was fortunate that this latest example worked out as intended on national television.
“See, he made a good play,” Nagy said with a laugh. “He made me look good.”
And all it took was getting his attention by using one of the magic words you can’t say on TV, and Trubisky getting the message.