An “overwhelming number” of Chicago Bears players want head coach Matt Nagy fired according to NFL insider Jordan Schultz.
Schultz co-hosts the Playoff Pod with Bears’ top wide receiver Allen Robinson, so he’s got a direct connection to the team. He took to Twitter on November 22 to reveal that Nagy has lost the team. “He lost some of the locker room last season, but now it’s gone,” Schultz tweeted.
An overwhelming number of #Bears’ players want Matt Nagy gone, league sources say. “He lost some of the locker room last season, but now it’s gone,” one source adds. One key holdup: No HC in the 101-year franchise history has ever been let go during the season.
Schultz then appeared on 670 The Score’s Parkins & Spiegel Show and discussed the situation in more detail.
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Schultz on Nagy Getting Fired In-Season: ‘First Time for Everything’
Schultz told co-hosts Danny Parkins and Matt Spiegel his report is accurate, and that Nagy started losing the locker room last year after the Bears lost to the Detroit Lions for the first time since 2017. Schultz revealed the Bears coach further distanced himself from the team early on this season, when he elected to start veteran quarterback Andy Dalton over a rookie first-round draft pick Justin Fields.
“It started at the beginning of the year when he named Dalton the starter,” Schultz told Parkins.
Now, in the throes of a five-game losing streak, Bears players — most of the team, according to Schultz — want Nagy gone. As he also noted in his tweet, firing a head coach before the regular season concludes isn’t something the Bears have done since the team was founded in 1920.
When Parkins asked Schultz if he thought it might be possible the front office could part ways with Nagy before the season ends and break tradition, he replied: “There’s a first (time) for everything.”
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Schultz Says He Doesn’t See a Situation Where GM Ryan Pace Stays on, Either
Schultz also had some telling things to say about Bears general manager Ryan Pace, who arrived in 2015. The team is 45-61 in Pace’s tenure, and it has zero playoff wins in that span. According to Schultz, there’s a schism between Pace and the team, and it’s not going away any time soon.
“There are two different kinds of GMs,” he said, noting there are general managers who communicate regularly with the team and those who don’t. “I don’t think there’s any real connection to the players,” Schultz added, saying his sources told him there was “no communication and togetherness” when it comes to Pace and his own team. He also noted he didn’t see a way Pace wasn’t fired at season’s end, either.
Schultz was asked about his connection with Robinson, and he deflected a bit, saying: “I can’t go there with that.” That’s understandable, because if Robinson is one of his sources, it would be unethical for him to reveal that information.
After back-to-back 8-8 seasons, the Bears are currently 3-7, with the only winning season in his tenure coming his first year in 2018. He has been on the hot seat since for over a year now, and the one thing Nagy was said to have going for him is the idea that he had the trust and respect of his players. Now, that looks like it’s gone, as well.
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Insider Connected to Bears Reveals Scathing Info About Players, Matt Nagy