Rozner: Bears' Nagy revealed plenty by taking knee

If you regularly subject yourself to Bears news conferences, you know the answers before the questions are asked.

GM Ryan Pace is fired up.

Head coach Matt Nagy is going to stay patient and positive because his quarterback just arrived in Chicago and every week he sees improvement.

And Mitch Trubisky, three years into his NFL career, knows he needs to hit receivers when there's no defender in the same area code, so he will look at film and figure out what went wrong.

Rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, years fly off the calendar like TV remotes off the couch. Yeah, don't pretend like you haven't fired three remotes into a wall this season.

Five years into this Pace rebuild, ownership still buys in even with the Bears staring at a big deficit and the playoffs a thousand miles away.

Five years and a single playoff game. Is the Shaheen off the Pace apple yet?

The Bears are 3-4 after three straight defeats. The Packers are 7-1 and if they go 4-4 to reach 11-5, the Bears would have to finish 8-1 - and beat the Packers in Green Bay - just to even it up and get into tiebreakers.

Do you see 8-1 coming for the Bears?

As for the wild card, the leaders are Seattle and Minnesota at 6-2, and among the teams ahead of the Bears - who sit No. 12 out of 16 in the conference - are the Rams (5-3), Panthers (4-3) and Eagles (4-4), three teams that have reached the Super Bowl in the last four years.

If the Seahawks and Vikings go 4-4 to get to 10-6, the Bears would have to go 7-2 just to tie them.

Anything about the Bears say 7-2 to you, after losing to a 2-5 Chargers squad missing half a team to injuries? The only team left on the schedule with a worse record than the Bears today is the Giants (2-6).

They also have the Lions twice, the Eagles this Sunday, the Rams, Cowboys, Packers, Chiefs and Vikings.

The Bears have four home games left, but they're 1-3 at home, air-raid sirens, manufactured noise and all.

So five years in, after so many picks labeled as steals by the Pace-infatuated experts, where are the Bears going?

Five years with five drafts and five chances in free agency. One playoff game. Is that good enough for ownership in a league so bad that you can turn it around in two years if you draft well?

Pace was gifted a contract extension when John Fox was fired because this was all the fault of Fox. He quickly understood what Trubisky was so Fox was reluctant to expand the playbook and let him throw it all over the field.

Fox had to be fired, went the narrative, because he was too conservative and Trubisky was Joe Montana just waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting NFL.

Seriously.

Nagy was hired because he possessed a magic offense that would lead the Bears to the Super Bowl and Trubisky to the Hall of Fame.

How's that working out for you?

Nagy so lacked trust in his offense at the end of Sunday's game that he took a knee rather than try to score or help the kicker.

How many times have you seen Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady in that situation not only try to get more yards, but actually try to get the ball in the end zone so the result is not left to a kicker?

Bears apologists will say you can't compare Trubisky to Rodgers or Brady, but that's exactly what they were doing when Pace made the pick and was universally supported in Chicago for such a brilliant idea, giving away picks and moving up in the draft to take a kid who made 13 starts in college.

What's really scary now is not Nagy's decision in the final minute. It's how incompetent he thinks his quarterback is that he doesn't trust him to make the right decision with the football.

This is as football simple as it gets.

Son, we're in field goal range. Get us more yards or throw the ball away and do not take a sack. High school quarterbacks know how to manage this moment.

But rather than make the kick easier, or try to score the football, Nagy stopped the offense right there because he doesn't think the No. 2 pick in the draft can handle the equivalent of a high school math problem.

In other words, Nagy is today exactly where Fox when he was fired two years ago, watching a project at quarterback and wondering if he will ever get better, if he will ever be able to operate an NFL offense or read an NFL defense.

Someone owes John Fox an apology.