Bears Letting Opportunity Vanish

Analysis: If the Bears fail to act on Matt Nagy's future after Seahawks game, they'll show no lessons have been learned by ownership.

USA Today

It's possible Sunday's game is the finale for Bears coach Matt Nagy.

If it isn't his final game, then there really is significant change coming to Halas Hall.

Then again, there is no real indication at the moment that such enlightened thinking prevails within the team's operation. 

The rule by the NFL allowing teams without head coaches to begin interviewing candidates on other staffs in the final two weeks will allow Jacksonville and Las Vegas to get a jump on the Bears for speaking to other teams' assistants, if owner George McCaskey fails to act after Sunday's game.

This is a situation widely reported over the last two weeks. 

A report by NFL Network's Ian Rapoport on Sunday morning did not say the Bears are planning to fire Nagy after the Seahawks game or that they even want to take advantage of this new rule, but that they could do it if they want to take advantage of the rule. 

This is merely common knowledge and has been widely reported everywhere since the rule was enacted.

It would be unprecedented for the Bears to fire in-season but NFL teams never had the ability to plan for and use this kind of an advantage in the past.

Conspiracy theorists among Bear Nation might even look at the way Justin Fields and Andy Dalton both suddenly can't play in Sunday's game and say this is merely being done because a firing is imminent after this game. 

However, this makes little sense since Fields could benefit from any playing experience or exposure to defenses he can get. It just doesn't make sense to play him if he has an ankle injury, because he already has injured ribs as well. He loses his ability to get away from the rush and take hits on the ribs with a bad ankle.

Dalton's injury is the really bizarre one, since it is obviously a practice injury as he hasn't played since the Dec. 5 game with Arizona. And he hasn't even been practicing due to COVID-19 and before that a hand injury.

Still, no one in the league is in the habit of completely making up injuries, so they must be taken a face value.

The postgame press conference Sunday and then Monday's subsequent Nagy press conference will be interesting to watch, to say the least. Will Monday's press conference be one to announce Mike Pettine, Tom Herman, Sean Desai, Bill Lazor or Chris Tabor as interim coach?

Considering how little this game means, both press conferences seem likely to be more interesting than what happens against Seattle.

Either way, if such a move with Nagy isn't announced after this game, a postseason firing will be too late for the Bears to get a jump of any kind on anyone in the hiring process.

The only thing added to the Bears trophy case since their George Halas Trophy of 2006 is cobwebs and, it's largely been the result of slow action and lack of progressive thinking by ownership that this has occurred.

So, failing to act and allowing such a great advantage disappear would be right in character with how decision makers at Halas Hall always operate, and would indicate nothing much has really changed with one of the league's most dormant franchises.

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