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Matt Nagy, coach, Bears
In his first game as a head coach, Nagy looked like a lot like an Andy Reid season rolled into one game. The Bears got off to an incredibly hot start on offense, overwhelming the Packers with motion and looks they hadn't seen from the Bears in preseason. Chip Kelly ran the Emory and Henry offense for snaps in the NFL and split his tackles out, but the Packers weren't expecting to see left tackle Charles Leno lining up on the right side in trips with two other receivers. Throw in Khalil Mack's otherworldly first half and the Bears seemed like surefire locks to win at halftime in Lambeau.
Well, you saw what happened next. Aaron Rodgers took over, the pass rush slowed down, and the Bears secondary was exposed. Kyle Fuller was burned for a long touchdown by Geronimo Allison and later dropped a would-be interception that would have sealed the game. Prince Amukamara was beaten repeatedly by Davante Adams, who scored the second touchdown of the half. Rodgers finished the stunning 24-23 comeback win by finding Randall Cobb, who ran away from Eddie Jackson and sprinted upfield for a 75-yard touchdown.
Nagy contributed to the problems with some questionable decision-making on Chicago's last fourth-quarter drive with the lead. Reid has been criticized for throwing the ball and stopping the clock in years past, and when the Chiefs stopped running the ball during the second half of last season's playoff loss to the Titans, it was odd to see Reid take the blame while the team's new playcaller, Nagy, mostly avoided public scrutiny.
play
0:23
Nagy on Rodgers: 'He's special, we all know that'Bears head coach Matt Nagy discusses Aaron Rodgers after the Packers overcame a 20-point deficit to win.
That won't be the case anymore, as Nagy played his way into the Packers' hands late in the game. With the Bears running the ball successfully on a drive that had already taken six full minutes off of the clock, Chicago faced a third-and-1 on the Green Bay 14-yard line with 2:47 to go and the Packers out of timeouts. A first down would have possibly allowed the Bears to run the clock down to 35 seconds or so before kicking a field goal (or picking up another first down to seal the game). Running the ball would have allowed the Bears, at the bare minimum, to take the clock near the two-minute warning.
Instead, Nagy threw the ball on third-and-1 on a pick play designed to get Anthony Miller open on a drag route and Tarik Cohen open downfield for a possible touchdown. Cohen somehow found a huge mismatch against 261-pound linebacker Reggie Gilbert, but Mitchell Trubisky tried to make the shorter pass and threw the ball too hard to Miller, whose drag route was sloppy and came way too shallow to take advantage of the picks while staying close to the first-down marker. Even if Trubisky had completed the pass, Miller would have struggled to get a first down or even make it back to the line of scrimmage.
What compounded the mistake on third-and-1, though, was the decision to kick on fourth-and-1. Coaches like to kick a field goal up three points late in games to force the opposing team to try to score a touchdown, but it has the strange habit of accidentally optimizing coaching behavior. When a team is down three points late in a game, its coaches will often set the target of kicking a field goal to extend the game and base their decision-making around getting in field goal range. This goes double for a conservative coach like Mike McCarthy.
When you go up six points, though, coaches have no choice but to empty the well and score a touchdown. I don't think it made a huge difference here because Cobb took an 11-yard pass to the house, but the Bears would have been in the ascendancy if they had gone for it in lieu of attempting a 32-yard field goal to make it a six-point lead, given their chances of success. Brian Burke's model suggests that the Bears should have gone for it if they thought they could convert fourth-and-short 19 percent of the time against the Packers in that situation.
Nagy will learn. There are worse fates than living up to Reid, who has built a career out of being the Honor Roll version of Jeff Fisher in winning 10 games like clockwork every season. Doug Pederson has proved that coaches can learn from Reid and still get aggressive, and the Bears looked about as terrifying as any team in football during the first half. They also blew a 17-point halftime lead, which teams rode to a 53-5 record over the past five seasons. This one will sting.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/24630537/week-1-2018-nfl-replacements-change-season-comes-next
In his first game as a head coach, Nagy looked like a lot like an Andy Reid season rolled into one game. The Bears got off to an incredibly hot start on offense, overwhelming the Packers with motion and looks they hadn't seen from the Bears in preseason. Chip Kelly ran the Emory and Henry offense for snaps in the NFL and split his tackles out, but the Packers weren't expecting to see left tackle Charles Leno lining up on the right side in trips with two other receivers. Throw in Khalil Mack's otherworldly first half and the Bears seemed like surefire locks to win at halftime in Lambeau.
Well, you saw what happened next. Aaron Rodgers took over, the pass rush slowed down, and the Bears secondary was exposed. Kyle Fuller was burned for a long touchdown by Geronimo Allison and later dropped a would-be interception that would have sealed the game. Prince Amukamara was beaten repeatedly by Davante Adams, who scored the second touchdown of the half. Rodgers finished the stunning 24-23 comeback win by finding Randall Cobb, who ran away from Eddie Jackson and sprinted upfield for a 75-yard touchdown.
Nagy contributed to the problems with some questionable decision-making on Chicago's last fourth-quarter drive with the lead. Reid has been criticized for throwing the ball and stopping the clock in years past, and when the Chiefs stopped running the ball during the second half of last season's playoff loss to the Titans, it was odd to see Reid take the blame while the team's new playcaller, Nagy, mostly avoided public scrutiny.
play
0:23
Nagy on Rodgers: 'He's special, we all know that'Bears head coach Matt Nagy discusses Aaron Rodgers after the Packers overcame a 20-point deficit to win.
That won't be the case anymore, as Nagy played his way into the Packers' hands late in the game. With the Bears running the ball successfully on a drive that had already taken six full minutes off of the clock, Chicago faced a third-and-1 on the Green Bay 14-yard line with 2:47 to go and the Packers out of timeouts. A first down would have possibly allowed the Bears to run the clock down to 35 seconds or so before kicking a field goal (or picking up another first down to seal the game). Running the ball would have allowed the Bears, at the bare minimum, to take the clock near the two-minute warning.
Instead, Nagy threw the ball on third-and-1 on a pick play designed to get Anthony Miller open on a drag route and Tarik Cohen open downfield for a possible touchdown. Cohen somehow found a huge mismatch against 261-pound linebacker Reggie Gilbert, but Mitchell Trubisky tried to make the shorter pass and threw the ball too hard to Miller, whose drag route was sloppy and came way too shallow to take advantage of the picks while staying close to the first-down marker. Even if Trubisky had completed the pass, Miller would have struggled to get a first down or even make it back to the line of scrimmage.
What compounded the mistake on third-and-1, though, was the decision to kick on fourth-and-1. Coaches like to kick a field goal up three points late in games to force the opposing team to try to score a touchdown, but it has the strange habit of accidentally optimizing coaching behavior. When a team is down three points late in a game, its coaches will often set the target of kicking a field goal to extend the game and base their decision-making around getting in field goal range. This goes double for a conservative coach like Mike McCarthy.
When you go up six points, though, coaches have no choice but to empty the well and score a touchdown. I don't think it made a huge difference here because Cobb took an 11-yard pass to the house, but the Bears would have been in the ascendancy if they had gone for it in lieu of attempting a 32-yard field goal to make it a six-point lead, given their chances of success. Brian Burke's model suggests that the Bears should have gone for it if they thought they could convert fourth-and-short 19 percent of the time against the Packers in that situation.
Nagy will learn. There are worse fates than living up to Reid, who has built a career out of being the Honor Roll version of Jeff Fisher in winning 10 games like clockwork every season. Doug Pederson has proved that coaches can learn from Reid and still get aggressive, and the Bears looked about as terrifying as any team in football during the first half. They also blew a 17-point halftime lead, which teams rode to a 53-5 record over the past five seasons. This one will sting.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/24630537/week-1-2018-nfl-replacements-change-season-comes-next
