Halfway through the NFL season there are already two head-coach vacancies with more surely to come as fall turns to winter. And NFL team owners will again be faced with a decision on who they want to lead their franchise.
Coaching agents and executives queried by CBS Sports in recent weeks have said former Bears head coach and current Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy should be in the mix for a head coach job this upcoming cycle, where there could be between six and 10 openings across the NFL.
Sandwiched between two stints in Kansas City as offensive coordinator was a four-year stop in Chicago as head coach, where he took the Bears to two playoff appearances — their only postseason appearances since 2011.
Time, sources say, has helped Nagy’s record in Chicago look even better. And Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is ready to vouch for his offensive coordinator.
“He does everything,” Reid told CBS Sports in a recent interview. “He sets up the offense. He coordinates the offense is what he does. And he’s so creative. I knew that when he was a quarterbacks coach, and I saw it when he was a coordinator, and then you saw it in Chicago as their head coach. And then he comes back here, and I want the best out of the guys. So with him you just cut him loose and let him go.”
Nagy came to Kansas City with Reid in 2013, working his way up the coaching ladder before becoming the OC in 2016. When the Bears fired him, he returned to K.C. in 2022 as the quarterbacks coach before taking over as OC again when Eric Bieniemy left for Washington.
Working against Nagy is the fact that he’s not the offensive play-caller and — like many people looking for career mobility with the Kansas City franchise — the greatness of Reid and Mahomes. The two first ballot Hall of Famers rightfully get an overwhelming amount of credit for the three Super Bowl victories, four Super Bowl trips and six AFC Championship game appearances.
Half of the NFL interviewed Bieniemy for a head job and he never got one, and now he’s the offensive coordinator at UCLA. Current defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has had a top five defense the last two years and is the only coordinator in NFL history to win a Super Bowl with two different franchises, but he hasn’t gotten a head coach interview lately. And on the personnel side, only Ryan Poles has been plucked out of Kansas City to be a general manager elsewhere.
Reid detailed what it is Nagy — and former Rams head coach Steve Spagnuolo — brings to the undefeated Chiefs.
“He’s great for me. Invaluable for me, because he’s been a head coach,” Reid says. “So he understands that and not a lot of people have sat in that seat. Not a lot of assistants have sat in that seat. I’m fortunate to have him and Spags for that matter. They’ve both been head coaches and they just kind of get it.
“There’s more to it than just calling plays and drawing up plays. It’s making sure that you’re keeping track of all the players and their lives and everything else on and off the field. And he gets that.”
The 8-0 Chiefs are undefeated, and they’re winning games by the skin of their teeth. The plus 56 score differential is the lowest for an 8-0 team in NFL history. But, again, they’re 8-0 with a 14-game win streak that is the longest in franchise history.
The classic offensive statistics for these Chiefs aren’t wowing anyone. In the Reid-Mahomes era that began in 2018, the 2024 Chiefs have the fewest yards per game (352.2), fewest yards per play (5.2), fewest passing yards per game (230.1), highest interception rate (3.3%) and highest sack percentage (5.9%) of any previous Chiefs group. The 24.6 offensive points per game is the third lowest.
But digging deeper, you’ll find how the Chiefs offense is winning. Kansas City is top-two in the league in third down percentage, 10-plus play touchdown drives, plays per drive and time of possession. The Chiefs offense is maintaining drives at a level no one else in the league is while draining the clock and choking out opponents with late-game comebacks.
Nagy has had to coordinate an offense that looks markedly different from training camp. Speed had returned to the Chiefs in July with the additions of Hollywood Brown and rookie Xavier Worthy to match with Rashee Rice. The passing game would be helped by second-year running back Isiah Pacheco, too.
But Brown suffered a preseason shoulder injury that required regular season-ending surgery. Pacheco fractured his fibula in Week 2 and still has a few weeks before he returns. Rice injured his knee in Week 4 and had season-ending surgery.
“He doesn’t blink on that,” Reid says. “It’s just next guy up and here we go. He’s great with that. He doesn’t ever sweat over that stuff. He just kind of moves on and goes.”
Hiring former head coaches came back into style last hiring cycle when Raheem Morris, Dan Quinn and Jim Harbaugh filled out three of the seven openings. This year, previous head coaches like Bill Belichick and Mike Vrabel figure to be at the top of many teams’ wishlists along with Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson.
For Nagy, he’ll have to show an NFL team owner what he has learned from his time in Chicago. He went 34-31 in four years with the Bears, winning the AP Coach of the Year award in his 2018 freshman campaign with a 12-4 record. But Nagy wouldn’t have another winning season (two 8-8 years followed by his 6-11 finale) and would be fired after the 2021 season.
The Bears went to the postseason twice, losing on the infamous Double Doink in 2019 and getting crushed by the Saints in 2021 when they snuck into the postseason.
Nagy had three years of Mitchell Trubisky and rookie-year Justin Fields in his four seasons with the Bears. Trubisky, the No. 2 overall pick in 2017, hasn’t been a regular starter since his last year with Nagy in Chicago.
Trubisky has a career starting record of 25-13 with Nagy and 6-13 without him. For the more analytics driven crowd, Trubisky had a cumulative offensive EPA (expected points added) on dropbacks of 56.08 with Nagy as his head coach. In his career without Nagy, it’s negative 63.56.
“I think it’s a slam dunk for an owner if they’re willing to really dig in and study what he’s all about, and really what the Chicago situation was at that time,” Reid says.
There’s not much benefit to Reid for potentially losing his offensive coordinator. But he realizes that could be a reality in just a few months.
“Outside of the offensive part he gets the whole picture,” Reid says. “And when you’re an owner you’re looking for a guy who can help maximize your players that you have, and he can do that. With the players he has, he will get the maximum potential out of those players. And I think that’s proven when you really look at it from when he was at Chicago if you’re real and a real student of the game.
“Plus, owners don’t want problems and they want guys they don’t have to worry about on and off the field. He’s a phenomenal person and phenomenal father, spends a lot of time here. But when he’s not here he’s with his kids and wife.”
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Author: Jonathan Jones
November 8, 2024 | 10:45 am
