Chicago Bears: The Matt Nagy saga just took an interesting turn
By Ryan Heckman
Tuesday morning, things started to get real interesting when it came to whether or not the Chicago Bears would hang onto head coach Matt Nagy through the rest of the season.
Most assumed Nagy would be fired, at the very least, after the regular season’s end. However, a report surfaced Tuesday stating otherwise.
Mark Konkol, who at one point worked for the Chicago Sun Times Nagy would not make it, received word from a source that further than the Thanksgiving Day game against the Detroit Lions. Specifically, Konkol stated that Nagy would be fired after the game on Thursday.
This sparked a day-long situation at Halas Hall. Nagy was already scheduled to meet with the media around noon, which meant that he would surely face questions in regards to that report. While Nagy denied that it was true, what happened later on Tuesday gave even more legs to the report.
Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy sure made it seem as though he could be resigning.
Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune quite the bit of information dropped Tuesday afternoon. Biggs stated that Nagy, in fact, met with ownership prior to the Bears’ walkthrough on Tuesday. After meeting with ownership, he spoke with the team and canceled the rest of his meetings for the day.
"“…Nagy did meet with ownership, according to sources. Those sources said Nagy told players that it was about them moving forward and that no one knows what tomorrow will bring, and they said he broke down the team on ‘family.’”"
That snippet, specifically, seems to take this entire saga a different direction.
The question now has to be asked: did Nagy and Bears ownership agree on a mutual parting? Is Nagy resigning, or did they actually tell him that he would be fired?
Matt Nagy resigning would certainly be the wildcard scenario, here.
What he told the team certainly sounds like the closing to a chapter. That doesn’t sound like something he would say simply to try and turn a new page in the season. That sounded more like, “Hey guys, I won’t be here for much longer and want you to know how I feel about you all.”
“Nagy told players it was about them moving forward and that no one knows what tomorrow will bring.”
This entire situation brings so many more questions, too, about the organization as a whole. If the Bears planned to fire Nagy, or “mutually part ways,” why would they wait until after the Thanksgiving game to do so?
Better question: how do the Bears let that report get out before they make the move? At this stage, it would make a lot more sense to just cut the cord before the organization looks any more foolish than they do already.
The handling of this Nagy situation, and all of the rumors, has been bizarre, to say the least. It sheds a lot more light on the dysfunction at the top, more than anything else. Ted Phillips, George McCaskey, Ryan Pace and the entire ownership look silly. There’s no better way to say it.