Chicago Bears: One area that will surely improve in 2019

With the season ready to kickoff there is one area that should see substantial improvement for the Chicago Bears.

All offseason, the pundits have talked about how the Chicago Bears will experience some form of regression. While they have focused their ire on the defense, the fact that they can’t envision much, if any improvement from the offense, says they aren’t expecting much from the team in 2019. This probably explains all the hot takes claiming the Bears not only won’t win the NFC North but won’t even make the playoffs.

Regardless of whether you agree with those assessments (and I don’t), there is one area in which the Bears will almost certainly see significant improvement from 2018. Specifically, I am referring to the development of head coach Matt Nagy.

Around this time last year, Nagy was preparing for his first game running the show. As many new coaches around the league will experience this year — including Matt LaFleur and Vic Fangio — running a team carries with it so many additional responsibilities beyond simply calling offensive or defensive plays. So the fact that the Bears face new head coaches in back to back weeks should be a slight advantage for the team.

However, it also underscores the fact that Nagy has already gone through the growing pains of being a first-time head coach and like Mitchell Trubisky should be a lot more comfortable in his second year.

That is important for a head coach who also calls the offensive plays. Last season was not only about Mitch learning the offense but also about Nagy learning who he is as a play-caller. What plays does he like to call, what works with Mitch, how aggressive does he want to be, etc.? He learned a lot about himself last season and already knows what to expect on Thursday night.

While LaFleur has been a coordinator before, there is nothing that will prepare you to open up as a head coach in the NFL on the road against your arch-rivals celebrating their 100th anniversary. Nagy, on the other hand, will be able to go back and review film of how he attacked the Packers’ defense and learn from it. He no doubt has already done a lot of self-reflection and evaluation of who he was as a play-caller last year.

The idea of Nagy improving in that regard should frighten the rest of the league. Think of how innovative and creative he was as he was figuring out how to deal with all the extra demands placed on the head man. Now think of how much better he will be with a full year under his belt. Thursday can’t get here soon enough.