Seems like Nagy is pretty well insulated from criticism right now because the receivers aren’t very naturally gifted and drop a lot of catchable balls. But you’ve now entered year 2 of the Matt Nagy experience, the year the cracks start show in the foundation. Year 1 was great, ya’ll won the Super Bowl. Year 1 was great in Chicago too, he won COY and we lost in the divisional round which is basically a Super Bowl to Bears fans. Year 2 was when all the finger pointing and player criticism started, cuz it definitely wasnt COY’s problem right? Had to be lousy players right?

Nagy has this unique gift of being unable to adjust as game conditions change while somehow completely abandoning the gameplan. Opening drives Nagy scripts ahead of time and tend to go well, probably reminding you of the well-oiled first Super Bowl run. After that, who knows what he’s doing. Look at the opening drive of the 2nd half. I’m assuming at halftime with a 10 point lead, they discussed the need to keep feeding the run game which has had more success against the Eagles D than almost every other opponent this year. So 6/7 opening drive plays are runs, then an inexplicable pass on 3rd and 3 followed by a punt. Why give your opponent an extra 40 seconds just in case they decide to make a comeback? This is the Nagy being cute/Smartest Guy in the room syndrome.

Other things that stood out to me as broad systemic problems were pass and rush attempts from half to half. 12 Pacheco carries in 1H, 9 in the 2nd. Mahomes 17 passes in 1H, 26 (!) passes in the 2nd. I was looking at some player prop betting lines at halftime and Patrick’s pass attempts # was set to 30.5. Those lines are based on a ton of historical data. so hitting 43 pass attempts is a huge outlier given the 10 pt lead, wet weather and Pacheco having a great game. It’s definitely fair to criticize pro athletes for dropping so many passes, but the broader issue is why is a team passing the ball so much when conditions are shitty, which leads to incompletions, which leads to stopping the clock and giving your opponents more time to comeback.

Thanks for reading and looking forward to meeting you guys in about 6 months, maybe 12 at Nagy’s Anonymous meetings.