Bill Lazor's Play-Calling Takes on Look of a Committee

Bears coaches described a scenario where several coaches and Mitchell Trubisky contribute heavily to the game plan and even help guide Bill Lazor's play calls.

Matt Nagy and staff gave some rare insight Thursday into how the play calling has worked with offensive coordinator Bill Lazor running the show.

To call it revealing would be more than a stretch, but it did depict how it really is a group effort and not just Lazor dialing up plays on a sheet or Nagy secretly pulling the strings and ignoring his assistants' wishes.

"I think, you know, as a staff I think we have a pretty good system that we're settling into," Lazor said. "It’s evolved a little bit as the year has gone on but I think we have a pretty good system of game planning and I think we have a pretty good system of how we are going to call the plays on game day.

"A lot of people have input in both of the processes the way it works together."

Lazor has been calling the plays with the team averaging over 30 points for the last three games, Nagy confirmed.

"I'll always love calling plays," Nagy said. "I think that just when you win and you score points offensively, which is what we've been doing lately, it definitely is fun. That part's fun. 

"It allows me to be able to step back and really just kind of see a lot of different things. I look at this thing right now not just on game day with the play calling, but I just look at this whole thing with our offense from really Monday to Saturday, the practices like the one we just got done with today, the energy and just the crispness and the tempo of the flow of the way we're in and out of the huddle."

Nagy wants to describe this as an effort with everyone owning a stake in the game plan and also what actually gets put on the field on game day.

This includes Mitchell Trubisky.

"We're collaborating in there working on the game plan, and then we rock and roll with the game plan and the call and everything. it's a good deal," Nagy said. "Mitch is involved with it.

"I think that the last three weeks, 3 1/2 weeks, we've actually gotten a lot better in the procedure. I think with Mitch, too, having him a little bit more involved with the things he likes with a little bit of a change with the identity of this offense, it's kind of helped out."

The collaboration between Lazor, passing game coordinator Dave Ragone, quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo and Nagy goes beyond designing the game plan. 

It goes for during games.

"Where I think we've been better is the collaboration in between drives," Nagy said. "So, where there's more talk about what we're seeing, some adjustments from drive to drive instead of quarter to quarter or half to half. That part I think has been really good.

"I also think it's been good with the players' side of just hearing input from them. In regards to the calling the plays, getting the plays in and the tempo of that, I think that it's just been good. I think you can see that, you feel it, and it's just allowed all of us to be able to do our job a little bit better."

This made everything as clear as mud. It sounded more like one big group hug.

So Nagy clarified it all.

"I would say probably what I mean by that is that there's more communication from all of us coaches on the headset in regards to talking about kind of what plays we want to get to next, and where we're at, and just kind of the flow of, hey, there might be you now a certain concept that we like that we all know is on the call sheet and we want to all see it," Nagy said. "And we might have more discussions on that than we did prior."

It sounds like play-calling by committee. 

However they're doing it, it's working—for the moment.

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