Getty Head coach Matt Nagy of the Chicago Bears talks with head coach Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Matt Nagy says he sees a ton of similarities in Patrick Mahomes and Justin Fields, at least so far.
The head coach of the Chicago Bears isn’t comparing the two quarterbacks, per se, but he thinks situationally, the two young signal-callers have tons in common.
Nagy has made a point to repeatedly tell the media that Andy Dalton will be the team’s starting quarterback, while stressing Fields will sit and learn behind him — just like Mahomes did behind Alex Smith in Kansas City back in 2017 when Nagy was K.C.’s offensive coordinator.
Now, after working with Fields over the last two months, the Bears coach says the two quarterbacks are “very similar.”
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Nagy: Fields & Mahomes Have Similar Football IQ
Nagy was asked directly where Fields is in comparison to where Mahomes was at this point in minicamp, and he gave a pretty straightforward answer.
“I would say with Patrick at this point of time in vet minicamp to where Justin is … Their personalities, football-wise, football IQ, all of that stuff is very similar on that side. Their actual personalities are a little bit different but that’s the beauty of life. We all have different personalities,” he began.
When asked if he thought Fields playing in big games like the national championship gave him an advantage over where Mahomes was when he first entered the league, Nagy said this:
I don’t think there’s any difference there. With Patrick coming out, there were some people that were concerned about the division he played in and some of the colleges and all the drop-eight that he saw in the scrambling and that sort of thing, and some of the history of those quarterbacks from those teams. No, I think those two guys, experience-wise … The one thing that Justin has is that he’s played in some big-time games and had big-time moments. That’s the one thing that I’m seeing right now from him that is really neat is whether it’s in practice — if there’s a bad play or a play has to be called two or three times in the huddle — he doesn’t get flustered. He’s very, very stoic. I was telling one of the coaches walking out today that I think he’d be a pretty good poker player because he’s pretty straight-faced, and that’s good. That’s a good thing. But we like that, because you never want to get too high, you never want to get too low and there’s a lot of bad that goes on in this game, like sports in general, and I think the great athletes are the ones that can respond from adversity and then can play a poor hand well, and that’s what we want all these guys to do.
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Nagy Wasn’t Saying Fields Was Headed for An MVP Season
Some took Nagy’s comments the wrong way, assuming the Bears coach was saying Fields was going to be the next Mahomes, or that he was going to walk away with the MVP award whenever he does take the field — and that’a not what happened. Mahomes sat all but the final game of his rookie year, so Nagy was simply comparing one rookie’s experience starting out to another’s when asked a direct question about it, but Twitter can be a vast wasteland of uninformed fans forming the wrong conclusions:
@wiltfongjr OK Nagy pump the brakes a bit. Even if he truly believes this and it is true, lets not start comparing a rookie to the best QB in the league before he has taken a single snap.
@wiltfongjr Don’t put unrealistic expectations on the kid
@wiltfongjr Can someone please put a muzzle on Nagy u til this kid starts an actual game in the NFL
So far, the early returns on Fields have all been unbelievably good.
“This kid is completely locked in,” Nagy said about Fields, noting the rookie’s plan until training camp included exactly zero days off. “There’s literally going to be football going on every day in some way, shape or form. Whether it’s studying or whether it’s footwork-wise, whether it’s talking into your phone and calling a play and hearing what you sound like … I think Justin would be the first to tell you it’s going to be football 24/7.”
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