(670 The Score) The movie "Moneyball" was on TV a few nights ago. Something you may not know about sportswriters is that they're actually contractually obligated to not only always watch the movie "Moneyball" but to then talk about it too. So 75 minutes later, while still watching the movie "Moneyball", I turned up the volume just in time to catch a definitely-not-over-the-top Brad Pitt monologue explaining the fine art of cutting baseball players to Jonah Hill.
"They're professionals," a weirdly smug Pitt tells Hill. "Would you rather get a bullet to the head or five to the chest and bleed to death?"
The Bears are bleeding the Nagy era to death. Purposeful or not, coach Matt Nagy's inevitable doom getting leaked, like clockwork, seemingly every week for the last month is a bad look for an organization that's always been very happy to embrace a certain reverence for its reputation of operating The Right Way. The Bears won't fire you in the middle of a season, but that doesn't mean they're going to "publicly" "support" you in any way for the last half of it! There was a report that Bears chairman George McCaskey addressed the team about Nagy's job status the day before Chicago's game at Detroit on Thanksgiving, but again, even that was an anonymously sourced report. Was it right? Probably! But my guess is that it would've been very easy, at any point, for McCaskey to find a way to make those reassurances public. Fortunately, he found a way to do so just in time for the NFL's announcement of ambitious future plans in Europe.
Moving on from Nagy is obviously the right decision. The Bears have, more or less, been consistently worse in every year since 2018, and the offense feels beyond repair, both schematically and reputationally. At this point, all that Chicago commends Nagy for is not letting the locker room implode – and as someone who has written about that more than enough times in the last six weeks, I can tell you even that accolade isn't all that interesting or noteworthy anymore. But sure enough, he's still showing up to Halas Hall with an enthusiasm that players and coaches have gone out of their way to commend. The Bears just played a Giants team that's actually in a disastrous place right now – I bet whoever takes over in January is going to compliment the culture that Nagy left behind within the first 90 seconds of the opening statement. Putting it on Nagy to consistently explain the daily awkwardness in Lake Forest looks, at best, lazy.
The latest drama? That came Wednesday morning, when WFAN host Boomer Esiason reported on his radio show that Nagy has already been informed that he'll be fired after the Bears' finale Sunday. Nagy denied the report.
"I can clear it up," Nagy said of the firing rumors. "I'm very honest and open with y'all, and that has not been told to me. There's gonna be reports that come out probably at this time of the season. So anything that is said or reported by anybody is just that. I haven't been told anything. I'm a pretty good source to ask … I would say that anybody that has a report that is gonna talk to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody, it's probably best just to call me up and ask me. I promise you I'll tell you the truth. You know what I mean? I'm a pretty good source."
Does that read like someone who's thrilled with his situation? Answering job security questions comes with the territory as an NFL coach, but doing it for a month straight feels cruel even by the NFL's strictly business standards. How did failing to address these rumors go for the Bears? Did all the whispers stop because the Bears didn't acknowledge Patch.com? It's hard to find a reason for why the team would operate like this that's not "because we want to." Maybe by the time Brad Pitt stars in the Double Doink movie, they'll have thought of a better one.
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.
