The New York Jets continue to look around the league to fill their latest coaching vacancy.
Zack Rosenblatt of The Athletic recently linked Gang Green to Kansas City Chiefs senior assistant and quarterback coach Matt Nagy. He was one of several names listed as a potential replacement option for Mike LaFleur as the team’s new offensive coordinator.
Matt Nagy Has Direct Ties to Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes
The 44-year-old who will be 45 by the start of the 2023 season is an experienced coach.
Nagy started back in 2001 at the high school level and filled a variety of roles at three different schools. He eventually broke through in 2008 as a coaching intern with the Philadelphia Eagles.
From there Nagy’s coaching career took off thanks to his relationship with Andy Reid. He did enough to impress him as an intern, coaches’ assistant, and offensive quality control coach that when Reid was fired by the Eagles he took Nagy with him to Kansas City.
Over the next five years, Nagy served as the quarterback coach and offensive coordinator. Although one of the most impactful moves of his career came in his final year with the Chiefs.
On the New Heights Podcast, Kansas City superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes admitted that Nagy “who really liked me” helped him on his top-30 pre-draft visit with the Chiefs.
Coach Reid was testing him on a bunch of plays at the team facilities during a five-plus hour visit. Nagy, the Chiefs offensive coordinator, sent Mahomes the plays the night before that they were going to go over.
As the former Texas Tech product put it he “crushed” the meeting and the rest is history.
Although knowing what we know now, it is fair to wonder if Nagy never hooks Mahomes up if he still would have ended up in Kansas City and eventually became the face of the NFL.
After that Mahomes rookie season in 2017, Nagy was “one of the more sought-after coaching candidates” per Rosenblatt, and was ultimately hired as the new head coach of the Chicago Bears.
He lasted four seasons there and finished with a 34-31 record. That included two trips to the playoffs and he was voted the NFL Coach of the Year in 2018.
After he was let go in 2021, Nagy returned to the Chiefs coaching staff in 2022.
Prior to getting into coaching, Nagy spent seven years as a professional quarterback in the Arena Football League on four different teams across the country.
Jets Getting Anything From the Chiefs Would Be Epic
Andy Reid is one of the best coaches in the NFL and he will forget more about offensive football than most of us will ever know.
Nagy has been right by his side for 11 seasons at the NFL level with the Eagles and Chiefs respectively.
Kansas City has been the standard for offensive football since 2013 and if the Jets could steal a branch off of that tree it would be a major win in this crazy offensive coordinator search.
There have been a lot of names thrown around and the Jets are casting a very wide net interviewing a lot of different people.
Nagy checks off a lot of the boxes you’d be looking for with his experience both as a head coach and as a coordinator. It could only help Robert Saleh to have someone on the staff that has been in that seat before to provide some insight.
The Jets messed up with the LaFleur hire because he was young and inexperienced. Nagy would be the complete opposite.
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Jets Linked to Patrick Mahomes’ Mentor, Former Quarterback