A Rogues' Gallery

Matt Nagy is toast, the only questions being when the Bears’ coach gets tossed and who does the tossing. The peasants want to see GM Ryan Pace get the boot, too, if only they can locate what rock he’s hiding under. How did it come to this? I’m glad you asked. Long story short, the Bears are an organization that has never moved beyond their founder-coach George Halas or the man he anointed as keeper of the flame. I mean, of course, Da Coach, Mike Ditka. His Ditka-ness would still be growling on the sidelines if he hadn’t gotten distracted with endorsements for everything under the sun, and I do mean everything. The Bears after Ditka are a lot like France after Louis XV, all flood no high ground. Dave Wannstedt took over for Ditka in 1993 and lasted six years, until a .417 winning percentage did him in. Wannstedt resembled Nagy in his rah-rah approach, with a strong dose of intensity thrown in; he looked a little crazy after losses. This may be a Chicago thing. The Bulls’ Doug Collins was the same way. One more year at the helm and Collins might have suffered a total breakdown. Ditto for Wannstedt in Chicago. Miami suited him a whole lot better. Following Wannstedt was Dick Jauron for five years and a .438 winning percentage. Jauron was just a guy who caught lightning in a bottle (13-3 in 2001) one season and not much else the other four. Jauron was succeeded by Lovie Smith, who hung around for nine years while amassing 81 wins and a .563 winning percentage. Make no mistake about it, Smith was a defensive genius, only that affected his approach to offense; it was like he couldn’t wait to get his defensive unit back on the field quick enough. So, naturally, the front office goes out and gets him Jay Cutler to build his offense around. Oops. Oil and water do not mix. Then again, neither did Marc Trestman and a head coaching job. Smith’s successor lasted all of two weird seasons. If Trestman had walked into a press conference wearing a cap wrapped in tin foil, nobody would’ve been surprised. Trestman was so bad people probably didn’t notice what a miserable human being his replacement John Fox was. Fox combined Smith’s disdain for the media with an inverse Midas touch—nearly everything he touched turned into a loss, as evidenced by a three-year .292 winning percentage. And that, my friends, is how Matt Nagy came to stand at the podium as Bears’ coach.