Bolt
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- Mar 19, 2019
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The Bears lost today when a 41-yard field goal attempt missed as time expired. But the field goal attempt didn’t have to be from 41 yards: When the Bears got the ball to the Chargers’ 21-yard line with 43 seconds remaining in the game, coach Matt Nagy Nagy decided to kneel down and run the remaining time off the clock rather than try to get closer.
Asked after the game why he didn’t call some more offensive plays to try to make the field goal easier, Nagy treated it as a stupid question.
“I’m not even going to get into that,” Nagy said. “I had zero thought of running the ball and not kicking it. The chance of fumbling the football, or they know you’re running the football, so you lose three, four yards. That wasn’t even in our process as coaches to think about that.”
Asked why he wouldn’t trust quarterback Mitchell Trubisky to pass in that situation, Nagy said it didn’t even cross his mind.
“Throw the football?” Nagy said. “What happens if you take a sack and you fumble? There was zero thought of that. I’ll just be brutally clear: Zero thought of running the football, zero thought of throwing the football. You understand me?”
When a reporter began to broach the topic with Nagy again, he got testy.
“Did I just say that? What did I say?” Nagy asked.
Nagy may not appreciate being second-guessed, but these are valid questions. A 41-yard field goal is not a sure thing, and running a couple plays to get a few yards closer might have made the difference. Nagy didn’t trust his offense not to turn the ball over, and that came back to bite him.