Opinion: Matt Nagy's balance of focus and fun the perfect formula for Chicago Bears
LAKE FOREST, Ill. — There aren’t many coaches who would lend a player his car. Not many who’d let a player hang around his house on an off day, either, interrupting what precious few hours of family time there are during the season.
That, however, is exactly what Matt Nagy did after Nick Foles signed with the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I went to training camp, signed late to Kansas City, went to my physical and was dropped off at Nagy’s house because it was his off day,” said Foles, who’d gotten to know Nagy during his rookie season with the Philadelphia Eagles. “I got to spend time with his family and then I drove back with him.
“I didn’t have a car so he let me use his car for training camp so I could get from place to place,” Foles added. “That’s just the kind of person he is.”
Much of the credit for the Chicago Bears’ improbable turnaround – from NFC North doormat the last four seasons to division champion – goes to its defense, a nasty, soul-sucking unit that has piled up sacks and takeaways at dizzying rates. The development of Mitchell Trubisky has also been key, with Nagy able to harness the second-year quarterback’s considerable, yet still raw, athleticism.
But all of that is secondary to Nagy himself, and the imprint he’s made on a franchise desperate to win.
“This is a people business, no matter how you cut it. However it works, you’ve got to know people and he’s got a great feel,” Andy Reid, who brought Nagy into the NFL in Philadelphia and took the young coach with him to Kansas City, told Paste BN Sports.
“He’s able to balance that whole toughness but making sure guys know he cares about them.”
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It’s not so easy a line to walk, especially for a coach who isn’t much older than his own players.
When the Bears announced they were hiring Nagy, then 39, offensive lineman Bradley Sowell figured they were getting a coach who would be laid back. But Nagy quickly let the team know that while he wanted them to be themselves and have fun – the post-victory “Club Dub” would be the hottest ticket in Chicago if it was ever opened to the public – this would not be a free-for-all.
Nagy is not a tyrant, and he is often effusive in his public praise of his players. But he also has rules he expects to be followed, and repercussions if players don’t. He calls it his “dark side” but the alternative is players thinking they can walk all over you, and there’s no quicker way for a coach to lose a team.
“He can control the room,” Sowell said. “He’s set the perfect balance of letting us have fun and making sure we know (he’s) not scared to call you out when something goes wrong.”
Added cornerback Kyle Fuller, “He does a very good job of balancing that. Get your work done, focus in, but also have fun.”
Reid had no way of knowing all this when he hired Nagy as a coaching intern with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2008. A quarterback at Delaware, Nagy had spent six seasons in the Arena Football League after graduation, coaching at local high schools in the off-season.
When it came time to apply for a second internship in 2009, Nagy was hesitant. He and his wife, Stacey, had four young sons, and he had a job selling homes. But Brett Veach, a college teammate who was working for the Eagles, helped convince him to give it another try.
“He’s a hard worker, first of all, and he’s very smart. And he wanted it badly. Those were all positive things,” Reid said. “He wanted to be a coach. He wanted to get in, he wanted to learn. He’d do anything to be able to do that. And he had to at the time.”
Reid was impressed enough with Nagy that he hired him as a coaches’ assistant for the 2010 season, and then as the offensive quality control coach in 2011.
But it wasn’t until Reid went to Kansas City and made Nagy his quarterbacks coach that he saw his protégé’s full potential.
“When he first had his opportunity to work with the quarterbacks, I’m going, 'This guy has really got it.’ Up to that point, he wasn’t doing a ton of coaching,” Reid said. “The whole time, I felt like he was wired for it.”
Nagy spent three seasons as the Chiefs’ quarterbacks coach, winning high praise for his work with Alex Smith. When offensive coordinator Doug Pederson was hired as the Philadelphia Eagles coach, Reid elevated Nagy.
“The thing I’ll always admire – Doug is in this category, Matt is in this category, Andy Reid, they’re genuine,” Foles said. “They are who they are.”
While Reid calls that genuineness in Nagy “innate” – “That’s the way he’s wired” – Nagy said he's modeled himself after Reid.
Reid gets a lot of grief for his playoff results, but he’s had only three losing seasons in his 20-year career as a head coach. Yet he is the same coach day in and day out, through wins and losses, in both the regular season and the playoffs.
Nagy has tried to employ that same type of consistency in his first season, and it’s taken on added importance as Chicago’s worst-to-first turnaround became a reality. The expectations have risen and so has the hype in a city that lives and dies with the Bears.
It’s been eight, long years since the Bears were last in the playoffs, and fans are euphoric not only at their return but what they see as the best chance since the '85 crew for an extended stretch of success.
“You do everything the same. When you do that, it’s worked,” Nagy said. “This is our first time together doing all of this. But they’re going to see with me that I’m just – we just keep going about our business and controlling what we can control.”
As fate would have it, the Bears will host Foles and the Philadelphia Eagles for Sunday’s wild-card game. This time, however, there will be no free rides.
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Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.