Matt Nagy explained his rationale of starting his back-ups against the Chiefs and that he first called Andy Reid before he did anything else.
When the Chicago Bears announced that they were going to sit their starters for Saturday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs, the result was a lot of confusion and even frustration for the outsider. Fans were going to have to watch backups play at regular season prices, and the game certainly wouldn’t be as entertaining to casual fans watching on television. For the Kansas City Chiefs, it was also a bit of a curveball.
Leading up to the game, Andy Reid had announced that his first team players would all be playing through the first half and potentially into the third quarter. For his starters to get ready for the regular season, it would have helped to square off against the Bears’ best. Instead, Bears head coach Matt Nagy threw the curve and decided to pull Mitchell Trubisky and the rest of his starting line-up.
The move left the Chiefs competing against the Bears hungry second unit. It also put them in a quandary. If players looked good against the backups, the response would be, “Of course!” If they looked bad, that only makes the Chiefs look worse. How can a team properly evaluate players heading into the season if they can’t even get a fair fight?
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Unfortunately for the Chiefs, they looked flat defensively and couldn’t put enough offense together to overcome Chase Daniel and the Bears offense in a 27-20 loss. However, after the game, Matt Nagy explained that he never intended any disrespect at all toward his former boss. In fact, he actually wanted to let him know first thing that he was even making the move to rest his players after what has been a long, tough preseason.
When asked about the move by reporters after the game, one in particular asked if he’d called Reid to give him a heads up:
"Too much respect to not do that. The last thing I wanted was for him to see that we show up out on the field and we’ve got our 2s out there. That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to do that and I let him know. Just out of pure respect, he’s the very first person that I called to tell. I felt a lot better when I did that. And I know how he is, and he respected that and appreciated that."
Nagy made it quite clear after the game that this was all about the Bears uncommon preseason schedule, which includes an extra preseason game that only one other team has had to deal with. The team had to play in the Hall of Fame game to start the NFL’s preseason schedule already, and Nagy was quite clear that he’s wanting to balance getting his team reps for readiness while also starting the season healthy and not already overly tired.
Even after four games, the Bears still have a fifth waiting for them on a short week this Thursday night against the Buffalo Bills.