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About 10 minutes into Ryan Pace’s and Matt Nagy’s 2019 season postmortem last New Year’s Eve, Pace was asked if the team would be making any changes to the coaching staff.
When he deferred to Nagy saying that was really his call, Nagy replied, “That’s all part of the reflection stuff that I talked about a few days ago. So we are working through that.
“Just being so fresh to being out of this, we are going to look at everything right now.”
Literally an hour or so later, it was reported that Mark Helfrich, Harry Hiestand and Kevin Gilbride had been fired, signaling that, best case scenario, Nagy had been less than forthright in his response about decisions that had already been made.
I have no conspiracy theories for you – fired is fired – but it did feel like the three former Bears coaches might have been thrown under the bus just a bit.
I was reminded of it Tuesday in Indianapolis at the Combine when Nagy began his first public remarks since that New Year’s Eve visit making introductions of their replacements before taking any questions.
“We’re excited about them,” Nagy said. “It’s never an easy time at the end of the year when we meet and go through those difficult decisions. But it’s about looking forward.”
After a few words each about Bill Lazor, John DiFilippo, Juan Castillo and Clancy Barone, Nagy finished saying, “We can talk more in depth later. But I just wanted to update y’all from the last time that we talked in Chicago.”
Fair enough, right?
But things got a bit more curious from there.
Asked what it was about DiFilippo that made it worth creating a new passing coordinator position for Dave Ragone to make room for him, Nagy explained, “With Flip? Just the way he teaches. I think that sometimes with all different positions – I’m not just saying the quarterback – but with all different positions, sometimes you can say we’re going to take the gloves off and we’re going to get at it now.
“And I think that Flip, in his DNA, has that, and you’ll see that and you’ll take notice of that.”
Is Nagy saying a little tough love could be the magic potion for Mitchell Trubisky?
A bit later he was asked to talk about his offensive line from last year to this coming season and how Castillo can help, and Nagy replied, “So uh, to answer your second question, Coach Castillo, here is the best part about him: he pushes you like none other. So when you get out to practice and see how hard he works these guys, he’s going to push them to the brink, but at the same time, they are going to know that he would fall on a sword for them.
“This will be our third year together, and we know that even in those positions we will have some competition rolling.”
Why did he not want to talk about the players and specify he’d only answer the second question?
Listen, there is nothing unusual or unreasonable about making changes to your coaching staff when a team takes big steps backward after a breakout campaign, and Nagy is more than entitled to have his own people around him and a staff he is completely comfortable with.
And Helfrich, Hiestand and Gilbride are big boys who know coaches are hired to eventually be fired in the NFL.
But the Bears’ new coaches aren’t going to make the old quarterbacks, offensive linemen and tight ends better football players. They may get a little more production out of them, but coaching changes aren’t going to make the NFL’s 29th-ranked offense in 2019 a playoff-caliber group in 2020 without a bunch of new and better talent.
While Trubisky is still a bit of a mystery, we already know the ceilings of last year’s offensive linemen and tight ends, and even with or without new coaches, they aren’t high enough.
It’s great if Nagy and Pace are happy with their new coaches, but it’s going to be a huge disappointment if they think they can win with the same players that got their predecessors fired.