With Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace out, fate of next Bears coach and GM tied to Justin Fields’ development – Chicago Bears Blog

When Matt Nagy took the Chicago Bears’ coaching job in 2018, his top priority was to level up a quarterback who had struggled the previous season as a first-round pick.

Four years later, his successor will face the same challenge.

The Bears fired Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace on Monday. Nagy couldn’t produce a consistent winner after inheriting Mitch Trubisky from predecessor John Fox, while Pace has been unable to solve the team’s quarterback position since he inherited Jay Cutler when the Bears hired him 2015. The Bears moved on from Trubisky last spring, but the struggles of his replacement — rookie Justin Fields — sealed the fate of both Nagy and Pace. And no matter whom the Bears hire to replace them, they will have little choice but to try to make it work with Fields.

You could make the argument Nagy took a job with one hand tied behind his back, weighed down by a quarterback who will go down as one of the biggest busts of this generation. (The Bears drafted Trubisky No. 2 overall in 2017, ahead of Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.) That the Bears went 25-13 in games Trubisky started under Nagy could be viewed as a resume booster, not an argument to fire him.

Eleven of those victories came in their first season together, when Nagy introduced an offense that limited Trubisky’s responsibilities and sprinkled in a series of innovative formations and playcalls to score points. That model proved unsustainable in the long term, however, and the Bears’ efforts to stack veteran backups who could rescue a playoff team if needed — Chase Daniels and Nick Foles among them — were not effective.

Even so, Trubisky was in many ways better in his rookie season of 2017 than Fields was in 2021. By the eye test, Fields…