(670 The Score) One of my least envious traits, I’ve come to accept, is being consistently and unnecessarily contrarian. I don’t know exactly when it happened, it just sorta did. No one likes it, least of all me, but that’s life. I don’t enjoy PB&Js, avoid ketchup at all costs and am generally apathetic about Taylor Swift’s re-released catalog. You would *hate* my opinion on Ted Lasso.
Here’s where I'd normally promise you that I’m not just a huge grump, but to be honest, I can’t be sure. Contrarianism is almost entirely useless, but it does, on the rare occasion, help with providing Takes I’m Willing To Publicly Present. So here it is, in all it’s dumb glory: I don’t think it’s a big deal that Bears veteran offensive tackle Jason Peters is still getting playing time over rookie Teven Jenkins late in the team's lost season. And it gets worse: I think coach Matt Nagy’s rationale makes total sense.
It’s easy to look at how the Bears treated the beginning of the Justin Fields era and wonder why they’re not keeping that same energy for Jenkins. I don’t actually think the comparison works all that well, though. Fields probably wasn't totally ready to be an NFL starter when he took over in Cleveland on Sept. 26, but that’s life when you’re a transcendent talent. For all the coach-speak about how quarterback is merely another position on the field, it’s just not. It’s one that’s approached and treated in a distinctly singular way. I would happily hear an argument that left tackle is the second-most important position on offense, but it’s extremely not the first. Even if Fields has been less decisive than the Bears staff would've liked – or whatever the excuse is – his undeniably great abilities, as unpolished as they may be, provided a certain dynamism that no one else on the team could replicate.
The Bears haven't felt that same desperation at left tackle. And I know that Nick Foles has an intoxicating flair for the dramatic, but there really wasn’t any upside in seeing whether he could've won the Bears one or two more games. Let’s also not forget the fact that – and I hate to be the bearer of bad news – Foles isn’t a future Hall of Famer. Neither is Andy Dalton. Peters is, and at the risk of pointing out the painfully obvious, that makes a difference. He’s also playing about as well as anyone on the Bears’ offensive line.
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It’s one thing to hop on the dumb bird app and stack some retweets by loudly exclaiming that if you were the coach, you’d simply make the switch – it’s another thing entirely to actually go tell one of the game’s great offensive linemen, who saved the left side of your line this season after literally getting off a fishing boat to pick up your call, that he lost his spot because the team wants to see six quarters from your replacement. And by the way, that replacement still seems, politely put, a bit overwhelmed. The NFL is a business, sure, but every business has office politics. For all his faults, Nagy always seemed capable of navigating those waters successfully. I’m aware of how pointless it is to spend too much time commending him for not losing the locker room a week before he’s fired, but far more schematically savvy head coaches have had far worse man management tendencies -- and with not a whole lot more wins to show for it. Decisions like this are a major part of why Nagy has, for the most part, kept the respect of veterans in a locker room that hasn’t won a ton since 2018.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s the smartest decision that Nagy has ever made. The decision deserves plenty of the criticism that it’s getting. Putting aside all the football stuff for a moment, choosing to openly operate as if it’s been difficult to find the 39th overall pick in in the NFL Draft last spring some snaps on a 6-10 football team seems awfully naive. Spending every press conference since Thanksgiving leaning into kinda-unsubtle, fatalistic answers about only doing what’s best for the Chicago Bears is hard to pull off as the sole excuse for not trying something new. I absolutely wouldn't blame Nagy for perhaps not having as much of an emotional investment in the Bears’ immediate future as say, literally anyone else, but there’s something disingenuous about how openly unaligned his words and actions are – it is, for example, asking a whole lot to suggest that the fourth quarter of a 29-3 game was a better time to evaluate Jenkins than earlier in the second half of a 22-3 game. I’m pretty sure there's room for one future Hall of Famer and one rookie on a line that has the worst adjusted sack rate in football.
And while having an all-time great left tackle on your team certainly helps, it isn't a tide that lifts all boats the way quarterback talent does. The San Francisco 49ers have Trent Williams, probably the best lineman in football, and their line ranks 14th in pass block win rate, 12th in run block win rate and 19th in adjusted sack rate. Leaning on the idea that Peters has been a bedrock of the team’s success as the Bears fight for their seventh win on the last day of the season isn’t the ringing endorsement Nagy seems to think it is.
If you want to be mad about it, I’m not going to try and stop you. Be mad about whatever you want! I’m mad that the Bears only threw one flea-flicker against the Giants. But of all the indefensible decisions that Nagy has made in Chicago, this just doesn’t seem worth the outrage that the others rightfully are. And in a week, we won’t ever have to talk about it again! Hopefully we can find something else to be mad about by then.
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.