Matt Nagy thought about taking a year off after the Bears fired the head coach in January as part of a franchise-wide housecleaning.
But after spending a few weeks on vacation, Nagy decided to use the way his Bears career ended as motivation at his next stop — which, conveniently enough, was the same as his previous one. The Chiefs — for whom Nagy served as offensive coordinator before Ryan Pace named him head coach in 2018 — chose Nagy as their new quarterbacks coach and senior assistant in late February.
A day after the Bears’ 6-11 season ended, chairman George McCaskey, on the advice of consultant Bill Polian, fired both Nagy and Pace. Nagy finished with a 34-31 record in four seasons and was dogged by a popgun offense in his final three seasons.
“I want to use my experiences in Chicago to help me be better here for our team here in Kansas City …” Nagy told Chiefs reporters Thursday in his first public comments since his firing. “There’s a little bit of humility you have to have to do this.”
Particularly when the results were as frustrating as they were in Nagy’s final three seasons, in which his offense never finished above 22nd in points or 24th in yards.
“You have highs and lows and you learn,” Nagy said. “You have so many hats you put on at that time. You learn a lot. You rely on those experiences that you went through. They’re real-life experiences. I didn’t have that when I went into my interview with Chicago. But I had four years worth of real-life experience of a lot of different situations — offense, defense, special teams. How to deal with players. How to deal with media. …
“What it does is it really allows you to grow, but it puts things into perspective. In life, for me, a lot of my failures that I’ve had, I’ve tried to use to best of my ability to make me better.”
Nagy seemed relaxed during an eight-minute press conference, joking that he was responsible for only three or four people in the quarterbacks room — instead of 250 as the head coach.
“It’s exciting for me,” he said. “It’s fun. And it’s refreshing.”
It helps to be able to coach Patrick Mahomes, the former MVP and Super Bowl champ who beat the Bears 26-3 when he faced his former mentor in 2019.
“He’s rare,” Nagy said with a smile. “But then when Kansas City came to Chicago and you gotta look across the sideline and see that dude over there. It’s like, ‘OK, maybe just score 24 instead of like 42.’
“I’m so excited to be in that room with him.”
