With the Bears finishing 8-8, many people are quick to assign blame for the NFL's 29th ranked offense.
As someone who has literally written a book about Matt Nagy's system, I can speak to many of the nuances that we see on tape. The most glaring problem with the Chicago Bears in 2019 was the regression from their 3rd year quarterback. With a defense that was set to regress after an insane 2018 season, the quarterback was supposed to pick up the slack. Everybody else on offense (yes, including Allen Robinson's blocking at times) contributed to the Bears' struggles. From an offensive production standpoint, I place the least amount of blame on Nagy's play calling/ play design (I will get into my other issues with Nagy later on).
There are a few misconceptions that need to be aired out regarding the Bears offense in 2019. In the wonderful world of social media, when somebody with a lot of followers tweets or writes something, people tend to grab onto it. Here is a systematic look at every talking point that surrounded the Bears' struggles in 2019, most of which I do not subscribe to:
"Matt Nagy needs to give up play calling duties."
One of the prevailing bases for this statement is people's belief that he abandons the running game. While there is a degree of truth to this, we can not use this as a foundation for our desire to change play callers. We saw what that offense looked like in week 2 at Denver, when Nagy featured the ground game heavily. The Bears managed 16 points, with a paltry 62 yards for their leading rusher, David Montgomery.
Nagy actively tried to fix the running game as well. This was an interesting case study when we compare it to the 2018 version of the offense. In 2018, Nagy paired back the amount of run schemes they used to focus more on inside/outside zone. This seemed to help the offensive line. In 2019, Nagy continued that trend. As the season went along, he started to add in more and feature gap schemes at times in order to fix the 2019 problem. Nothing seemed to work. The offensive line consistently struggled with every run scheme.
At times when the San Francisco offense abandoned the running game in 2019 (week 11 vs ARI), are we calling for Kyle Shanahan to give up play calling duties? Absolutely not.
Without a solid starting quarterback in 2017 and 2018, Kyle Shanahan's offense was not producing enough to the point where people were calling for him to be fired. With a healthy Jimmy Garoppolo in 2019, the 49ers are 2nd in scoring. Did Shanahan become a significantly better coach overnight? No. He schemed guys open in 2017/2018 as well, similar to what Nagy did in 2019.
From a scheme design standpoint, I thought the Bears had a good game plan for the run game most weeks. Execution lacked most of the time from the offensive line and running backs. Here is a video I made discussing a neat adjustment he used week 5 vs Oakland. This adjustment took place between drives, which is impressive. The clip of the play is below my breakdown link. The rough back block from the left guard prevents this play from taking off for a big gain: https://twitter.com/b_peters12/status/1186037571836616706?s=20
"Matt Nagy needs to call more play action"
There is a degree of truth to this, but this statement can not be applied in a vacuum. Nagy went into 2019 with the understanding that his quarterback would be better in year 2 of HIS system. They focused on what they were good at in 2018, and worked on expanding/protecting that over the off season. According to Football Outsiders, The Bears were more efficient with standard drop backs in 2018 as opposed to play action. You can debate whether this is a fair assumption or not, but every coach in this situation would do the same thing.
When people want to point to a situation like the Minnesota Vikings, we can clearly see that the system did help Cousins play better. But at the end of the day, how many more games did the Vikings win because of it? The answer is 1.5 (they had a tie). The Vikings also played a first place schedule in 2018. A limited Quarterback is still the limiting factor. Also, for what it's worth, Kirk Cousins is a decidedly better quarterback than Mitch Trubisky, so the results might not necessarily be the same.
With not much work on it in the off season, it is hard to make wholesale scheme changes like this mid-season. What is the better alternative? Scrap what you have been working on for a year and a half, or continue to work on it to iron out the kinks? I find it hard to condemn Nagy for a flaw that very few people identified when the offense had answers most of last year.
With the advanced analytical data we have available, it is fair to criticize Nagy for not adding more of this to his system in the off season. Andy Reid uses it often as well. Nagy seems to have taken that element of the offense in a different direction. Let's be clear, This is not a fireable offense. He can certainly learn from this. After all, this is his second season calling plays. No play caller is mistake-free in their second season.
When Nagy did add more play action just after mid-season, Mitch still struggled with it. Here is a cutup that shows the issues that still persisted.
"Nagy needs to get Mitch out of the pocket more"
Straight sprint-outs and nakeds severely limit how the offense can attack. They are fine if used a few times a game to move the launch point for the O-Line or take a shot downfield, but they can not be the identity of an NFL offense. The Table below shows how the action was not effective for the Bears in 2019. They were called a total of 46 times.
Here is a cutup of some of the less-effective ones.
The main takeaway here is that sprint outs and nakeds are not the answer for limiting Trubisky's pocket issues. They were in fact less efficient than most of their drop back pass concepts. The timing and accuracy issues still persisted.
"Nagy just needs to pound the rock with Montgomery on 3rd and short"
On straight ahead run plays (including QB sneaks), the Bears converted 63% on 17 attempts of their third/fourth and 1-2 yards. When throwing, the Bears converted 56% on 16 attempts. From a play calling perspective, game flow can often dictate these calls more than conversion rates, because of the small difference in probability. Without a tangible difference in conversion rate, the Bears wanted to be balanced in these situations to prevent a defense from overplaying the run.
I would like to see more QB sneaks on third and 1. That is the most efficient play in football. Nagy does use it, I would just like to see it a little more. The Bears were 3/4 with sneaks in 2019.
"Nagy needs to run the ball under center more"
Through week 11, after the Bears got through their roughest part of the season, they averaged more yards per carry running from shotgun than from under center.
In The Nagy/Reid/Peterson offense, the run game is heavily based in RPO reads for the quarterback. This keeps the offense from having to run into bad looks and overloaded boxes. RPO's are usually ran from shotgun to help the quarterback see his post-snap read. At times in 2018 (think week 14 vs LAR) Nagy did some extreme simplification mid-game to adjust for Trubisky's struggles. In these situations, he leaned heavy on RPO's.
With that said, Trubisky still struggled with these reads at times. RPO's are much simpler than traditional drop back pass concepts for quarterbacks. They are, quite literally, made for "One Read" quarterbacks. Most of them require to read a single defender as his run/pass key. Trubisky has proven over the course of two years that he can not consistently do this. Here is a cutup of simple RPO reads gone wrong. I marked these as Trubisky having misread the keep/give action or the run/pass element. One inaccurate throw included as well.
If Trubisky can't handle RPO reads, there really isn't much left that Nagy can do to help him.
In the drop back pass game, Trubisky has struggled as well. In their post-season press conference, Nagy said that Mitch needs to understand/read coverages better in 2020 (an alarming thing to say about a 4th year NFL QB). Here is a twitter thread I put together of a few examples Nagy is talking about: https://twitter.com/b_peters12/status/1213178025266831370?s=20
Matt Nagy
There are situations that Matt Nagy is responsible for, as the Head Coach and Offensive play-caller. Here are a few that, in my opinion, can be fairly assessed to him:
- His willingness to settle for long field goals at end of game situations. Regardless of how good your kicker is, you should make his job as easy as possible. One example of this is the end of the Chargers game, where he elected to not even run the ball, but instead kneel to bring out his kicker for a long field goal attempt.
- The 3rd and 1 vs the Rams. My issue does not lie with the design of the play (speed option to the short side of the field), it lies with the fact that Trubisky was injured, and Montgomery was lined up in a pistol set 9 yards behind the line of scrimmage. The design of the play worked. If Trubisky does his job and attacks the EMOLS (end man on the line of scrimmage), the Bears pick up the first down.
- In general, I felt a sense of complacency with the team that we did not feel in 2018. Coming off a 12-4 season, this is what the head coach needs to be fighting against.
The positives far outweigh any negatives for Nagy. Changing the culture of the organization and bringing in a well-designed offense are not to be taken lightly. If you fire Nagy, who are you hiring to replace him?
It goes without saying that this off season is huge for Nagy/Pace. What will they do to address the quarterback position? If they choose to do nothing tangible, the positives will not outweigh the negatives at this time next year.
*All stats are from weeks 1-16. With the Vikings not playing their starters in week 17, that data was thrown out.
