Chicago Bears: Sean Payton copied Matt Nagy’s play design

ESPN 1000 does a lot of great work for Chicago sports fans. Carmen and Jurco had New Orleans Saints head coach, Sean Payton on their show this week and he gave them a very interesting tidbit about his gameplan. He saw a play that the Chicago Bears ran against his Saints on Wild Card Weekend and straight-up copied it. He admitted to them on live radio that he “took the play, erased Matt Nagy’s name, and wrote his.” That is very interesting when you think of the reputation Matt Nagy has in Chicago right now.

When Nagy first came over, we heard about how impactful he was when he was the offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs. It was him who told the Kansas City brass that Patrick Mahomes is a generational talent (when basically no one else saw it) and now they are reaping the benefits of it there. He is now in Chicago trying to do what he did with them what they do in Kansas City. Love him or hate him, you have to wonder how he would be if the Bears weren’t a bad franchise.

Sean Payton copied a play straight from the Chicago Bears playbook.

You might remember the trick play against the Saints in the playoffs where Mitchell Trubisky took a handoff from a handoff and threw it downfield to Javon Wims. Wims then dropped the ball and cost the Bears an early score that would have changed the game. It is awesome that the Bears were smart enough to draw this play up but Wims (who should have been cut earlier in the year) dropped it.

Payton, on the other hand, used the exact same play and called it “Florida State 12th personnel”. The reason that they called it that is because they had Jameis Winston make the throw instead of Drew Brees. Winston isn’t their starter but he can make the deep ball throw better than Brees at this point in their careers. Of course, they hit it and scored against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Divisional Round and the Bears missed theirs.

Many people have significant respect for Sean Payton. That guy copied something that Matt Nagy drew up and it worked. He had the right players and the Bears did not. If/when he ever goes to a new team, you have to wonder if he will look more successful and the Bears will look bad. This was just an interesting nugget that Payton gave Chicago listeners that should frustrate fans. Matt Nagy doesn’t deserve many excuses but this is a bad look on Ryan Pace for clearly not giving him enough to work with.