Rozner: Offensive guru Nagy hammers Bears defense

Matt Nagy always needs to "see the film" before he can evaluate a game.

That's his stock answer to every miserable Bears performance. Have to see the film. Not sure what he's doing during the game, but he needs to see the film.

So, he has now seen the film and his response to Sunday's humiliating defeat in Green Bay was to rip the Bears' defense Monday morning.

That's extraordinary on so many levels and clearly the last act of a desperate man - or perhaps the first act of Henry V, if you'll forgive me, Howard Johnson.

This is a coach who never criticizes anyone, unless he's bus-tossing a kicker he knows is about to be fired after his offense disappeared in a playoff game.

Each week, every player on his team is trying so hard and has so much character and cares so much. Effort is never the issue.

Until Monday. Now, the defense is the problem.

That's amazing because the defense has carried his wretched offense since the middle of 2018, while his scheme and pet project at quarterback have failed repeatedly.

Nagy says the Bears stick together no matter what and never point fingers, and then he pointed one at the defense, the only thing that's been keeping the Bears in games since the league figured out Nagy's offense some 32 games ago.

It's OK, though, Nagy says, because the defense can handle criticism.

The same can't be said, however, for his quarterback, of whom the coach never says a bad word. We can only assume then, based on what Nagy said Monday, that Mitch Trubisky is too fragile to handle it.

This is an excellent way to lose a team, if the head coach hasn't already lost the team.

Do you think the defense looks at the No. 2 pick in the 2017 draft and believes he's an NFL superstar? It's more likely that the Bears' best defensive players drive home thinking that if they had a genuine NFL starter at QB that they might have a chance to win a game.

And yet, the head coach rips the defense, never Trubisky.

Granted, the defense was bad Sunday night in Green Bay minus Akiem Hicks, and deserved the verbal beating, but they've been starting to look old and tired for weeks, the natural result of too many 3-and-outs by the offense the last three years, and of the calendar itself.

If you're a defensive player, however, Nagy's duplicity is disturbing.

For two years, Nagy has been saying that "we" have to figure it out, when discussing the anemic offense, and for two years the offense has been the same.

It's really not that complicated. Nagy doesn't like to run the ball. The offensive line is bad, courtesy of GM Ryan Pace, and the opposition defense doesn't fear the quarterback.

So, yeah, it's hard to run the ball when you give up on it so quickly in games.

Nagy is so lost that after the Minnesota defeat two weeks ago, he said he would be asking his players for help. Taking a survey of your players because you don't know what to do is akin to switching quarterbacks because neither of them can play.

That is a sure sign of disarray.

"When you get into these bye weeks, it's very, very important to talk to your players and ... get input from your players," Nagy said after the Minnesota game. "What's their suggestions? What's their thoughts? And then you kind of take that and figure out what's best for your team.

"That's what I am going to do as a head coach and as a guy on offense. I'm going to find out a lot from our players. I'm going to talk to them individually."

If he did, it didn't work. Nagy is 0-3 in three seasons after a bye week.

In any case, it's a bit hard to imagine, say, Bill Belichick, asking his players what to do because he has no answers for a dreadful offense.

As for choosing now to suddenly criticize some of his players, you have to wonder where that came from. The Director of Postgame Dancing has been so careful not to do it for three years, and it's not like he did it right after the game when emotions were running high.

This was a calculated move Monday morning, perhaps suggested by someone else as a last-ditch attempt to salvage this mess, as some sort of motivational tool.

But blaming the defense was a big miss. This is on Pace and Nagy and everyone in that locker room knows it.

Maybe that would have been the proper place to start pointing fingers.