Justin Fields has just been named quarterback of the Chicago Bears, and I think I speak for many Bears fans when I say it’s about time. Frankly, the last starting quarterback, Andy Dalton, should have never been on the field. 

When you take a player with a first round selection, usually you expect starting caliber play from them right away. You don’t bench them for a guy who only got his team to 3rd place in the worst division in the NFL.

The Bears used Fields as a gadget player to start the season, but eventually had to actually let him play QB due to Dalton getting hurt. Then, Fields was chucked to the wolves. He has already been sacked 13 times in three games, including the game in Week 3 against the Browns where he got sacked a whopping nine times.

The handling of Fields is one of the many puzzling moves made by Bears head coach Matt Nagy over the last few years. As of now, Nagy has coached the Bears to only one record above .500 and two wild card losses. 

Over that span of time, the Bears have had an elite defense led by Khalil Mack, Akeim Hicks, Eddie Jackson, Roquan Smith, and Danny Trevathan. They also had Kyle Fuller until this year, when he was released and then picked up by the Broncos. They have the pieces on defense to go the distance, but they haven’t.

A good coach doesn’t take a Super Bowl contender and turn them into a team with an 8-8 record. Nagy was gift-wrapped one of the best teams in football in 2018, and now they are ranked 29th in the NFL power rankings. 

Nagy hasn’t made the team better over his tenure, and it shows in the stats. He had a promising first season, but Chicago declined. After that, the best season he’s had was last year, when the Bears barely made the playoffs with an 8-8 record because the NFC was weak that year. They got blown out by the Saints in the wild card game.

Additionally, one of the biggest red flags of Nagy’s season is how awful the offense has been. Since the beginning of his career as a head coach, Chicago has averaged 23rd place in the league in points scored and 27th in yards gained. 

Nagy was brought in to help out with the poor offense. While the offense did improve slightly from when John Fox was head coach, it isn’t nearly good enough to make the Bears competitive. 

The offense shouldn’t be this consistently poor seeing as it’s coached by someone who’s supposed to be an offensive guru. An offensive guru should be able to field an offense that can at least crack 20th in the league. Nagy is not good at managing an offense, and it’s apparent from the play on the field. 

Some people defend Nagy by pointing out that he has never had a good quarterback to work with, and that Mitchell Trubisky, the starting quarterback for the Bears in 2017-2020, was to blame for the team’s struggles. 

However, that isn’t the case. It’s true that Trubisky wasn’t a great quarterback, but he definitely isn’t to blame for the offensive performance. 

Case in point: the offense is still bad this year with a good signal-caller in Fields. Fields is a good quarterback who has potential, he’s just a little raw. If Nagy was a good coach, he would be able to seize that potential and turn Fields into one of the best QBs the Bears have ever had.

Also, Trubisky looks good this year in Buffalo, despite being the backup to Josh Allen. He had a solid preseason and was good when they played him in garbage time against the Texans. This leads me to believe that bad coaching was part of Trubisky being bad in Chicago. 

Finally, the offense wasn’t just Trubisky. They still had Allen Robinson, David Montgomery, Darnell Mooney, and Tarik Cohen to work with. Nick Foles was also an option to replace Trubisky, which he did do occasionally in the 2020 season.

In conclusion, Matt Nagy has taken Chicago nowhere, can’t coach an offense, and is botching the Justin Fields situation. Therefore, he is a bad coach and is an anchor to the Bears.