Chicago Bears: Quote raises suspicions over Nagy’s plan

Chicago Bears fans got their final look of Justin Fields this preseason on Saturday night, as they took on the Tennessee Titans in Nashville. It remains unclear when, if at all this season, fans will see Fields on the field again.

The plan has been crystal clear from the beginning of training camp that Andy Dalton is their starting quarterback. They declared him the Week 1 starter before giving Fields the chance to win the job in training camp.

Even as the offense has seemed to operate more effectively with Fields in the preseason, Nagy has stayed the course, insisting Dalton is the guy.

However, the groans from fans and media alike have grown stronger over the past couple of weeks, reaching a crescendo when Nagy famously said he needed to see Dalton in the regular season, as if his previous 10 years in the NFL didn’t happen. But it was just another example of Nagy backing himself into a corner with his various “word salads” that he can’t even keep them straight anymore, often leading him to contradict himself.

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So it was not a surprise when fans began to wonder whether Nagy was intentionally holding Fields back with his limited opportunities with the starters and his vanilla play calling during the preseason games.

Nagy and Pace have wanted so badly to stick to the “Kansas City model” and have Fields sit the season behind Dalton. However, that requires Dalton be at least serviceable as a starter, which he didn’t show in the preseason.

As Fields has quickly closed the gap this preseason, perhaps he has done so too quickly for Nagy’s comfort level. The better Fields performs, the louder the cries will grow to play him over Dalton.

So it wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise when we heard this from Charles Davis during Saturday’s broadcast:

https://twitter.com/ChicagoBears/status/1431776182148734976?s=20

Davis remarked after the play that “Nagy was having a night where obviously as the head coach of the Bears he wants Justin Fields to do well, but he doesn’t want him to do too well.” Why on earth would Nagy not want Fields to do “too well?”

Well the answer seems pretty clear. He wants to stick to his plan to sit Fields for as long as he can. Rather than accept that plans can change, and be willing to do so in the face of new information, Nagy is rigidly holding onto this one like grim death.

Even though Nagy tried to keep the game plan as vanilla as possible on Saturday night, Fields still found a way to demonstrate he is clearly the best option for the Bears at quarterback. In that moment Fields showed he can succeed in spite of Matt Nagy, and that just might be what the Bears need this year.