Chicago Bears: 5 things Matt Nagy did wrong in 2019

The Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy made some interesting decisions after the playoff loss against the Eagles last January and throughout this season. Here are some of those decisions and how to fix them going forward.

Before we get the issues, I must say, Matt Nagy is a smart guy. Coach Nagy has the swagger and confidence of a coach that can be great, he is just young and inexperienced. Making the playoffs in 2018 was something that hurt his progression as a coach. Nagy making the playoffs gave him too much confidence and expected to do the same in 2019. After a poor Chicago Bears season, Nagy will become a better coach. It just takes time.

1. Kicking Situation.

Starting the offseason, the Chicago Bears needed a new kicker after Cody Parkey missed 11 kicks throughout the 2018 season. 11 is almost one a game, that is terrible. After Parkey went on the Today Show to talk about his missed field goal, Coach Nagy was done with him. The whole city of Chicago was too and he did the right thing by cutting him.

Instead of drafting a kicker Nagy really liked in the later rounds, the Bears signed several different kickers. They started off by signing Redford Jones. They would bring in many other kickers but the final two left were Elliot Fry and Eddy Pineiro. Instead of seeing what these guys can do, Nagy made them watch the missed kick by Parkey day in and day out.

Pineiro was one of the kickers that said after Week 2 in the preseason that he was mentally exhausted. Many people questioned Nagy, some people even saying he was too rough on the kickers. Fry had the bigger leg but Pinerio was more accurate from 50 yards-in.

Once Fry was cut, Pinerio was the Week 1 kicker. He would be the first Bear to put up points in the 2019 season. He scored the only points the team got against the Green Bay Packers Week 1. He would then hit a huge game-winning kick against the Broncos a week later. After that, he was decent.

Pineiro did get injured in the weight room at the beginning of the season. He stopped doing kick off’s because of that. He would do onside kicks though, being 2-for-2 in reality. They took the second away because the first player that touched the ball was ruled out of bounce.

The Bears would actually lose a game against the Chargers off of a missed kick. Instead of running the ball up the middle to get a few extra yards or asking Pinerio what hash he wanted to kick the ball from, Nagy took matters into his own hands. Pinero’s kick would hook left and would have been made from just five yards shorter.

That once loss to the Chargers will go down as the game that broke this team. The Bears were 3-4 after that game and kept going downhill. Whenever Pinerio would miss a kick, Nagy would lose faith in him. During the Rams game, Pinerio missed one kick and Nagy was done with him. That’s not a good quality to have as a coach.

To fix that in the future, bringing in seven-plus kickers and mentally destroying them doesn’t help them. If they let Parkey keep his job after hitting four uprights in one game, why was he so tough on the kickers? Pineiro was the right choice and I think he has a bright future. It was just a risky decision by Nagy that luckily paid off, for now.