By Jim Coffman
You can’t overreact to that one, and by that I mean it wasn’t just a crushing defeat, it was worse.
The Bears suffered a 36-25 loss to the Saints Sunday that defies “Overreaction Monday.” The biggest meatball fan in the world can’t say anything about the game that qualifies as overwrought or that shouldn’t be a consideration as the 3-3 Bears ponder next moves this morning.
Bench Mitch Trubisky? Sure. Except there is a good chance that Trubisky is less of a problem than Matt Nagy’s playcalling. Give invisible man offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich a try calling plays? My guess is he would at least find a way to have the Bears run more than the record-low seven attempts they managed against the Saints.
Seven rushing attempts? Coach Nagy, the meatball in me is screaming, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Then again, when Nagy had Trubisky take a few shots down the field on Sunday, general manager Ryan Pace’s savior quarterback misfired, and then misfired again.
It is time to jump to one conclusion in particular: Trubisky is not accurate enough to be a successful NFL quarterback unless he is operating as a game manager who specializes in running the football at least a half dozen times a game. But Nagy can’t seem to bring himself to install that sort of a game plan.
And of course the overall success of such a plan would require exceptional, or at least well above average defensive execution. And the Bears sure as hell didn’t get that on Sunday, nor did they get it two weeks prior in London against a Raiders team that was killed by the Packers yesterday.
In case it wasn’t embarrassing enough being dominated by an Oakland offensive line that again, was at best ineffective against the Packers on Sunday, the Bears gave up another hundred-yard rushing game yesterday. This time the running back was backup Latavius Murray, who just so happened to be taking handoffs from backup quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.
Overreact to that!
Who could have ever imagined that Bears fans would find themselves beseeching a coach to run the ball more? Maybe Northwestern’s overmatched, ultra-conservative offensive coordinator Mick McCall could switch jobs with Nagy for a couple weeks.
I do have a bright side, though. Maybe just maybe that loss was so bad that it will force Nagy to undergo a major reassessment. Maybe just maybe our man Matt will have to re-examine his core principles, in particular the one that says you should always use the pass to set up the run and if the run isn’t working the first few times you try it, you must abandon it.
I had a bad feeling about this game from the first offensive play, when Trubisky handed the ball to Tarik Cohen for a run up the middle. That play hasn’t worked, at all, all season. But it is a play that Nagy has convinced himself must work at some point. The coach thinks he’ll put Cohen in in a single back set, the other team will think the Bears are going to pass it to him in the flat and then the run up the middle will work great.
Except it didn’t work in the first five games – not even against the pathetic Washington Racial Slurs – and it didn’t work on Sunday.
It is crunch time right now for Pace and Nagy. Someone has to step up and help the coach have a reality check Monday morning and Pace is the leading candidate. The Chargers are the opponent next Sunday and that will be a great time to overhaul the offense and challenge the defense to make, I don’t know, a big play or two.
Then again, seriously, how about the McCall for Nagy trade idea?
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Jim “Coach” Coffman welcomes your comments.
Posted on October 21, 2019