Matt Nagy studied at the feet of Andy Reid, whose 22-4 record after the bye as coach of the Eagles and Chiefs remains one of the marvels of the NFL.
Yet, by his fourth season as the Bears’ head coach in 2021, Nagy knew he couldn’t replicate that success just by sticking with the same routine during the team’s week off.
“I tried to follow that early on in my career, and it did not work,” he said that November.
Later that week, Nagy would lose to the Ravens and backup quarterback Tyler Huntley, bringing his Bears record after the bye to 0-4. He wasn’t alone. His predecessor, John Fox, went 0-3 with the Bears after the week off. The man who would take Nagy’s place, Matt Eberflus, went 1-2.
The Bears have spent nine months touting new coach Ben Johnson as something different. One way to prove it is to beat the Commanders next Monday night after an extra week to prepare.
The performances of Johnson’s offenses immediately after the bye have reinforced his reputation as one of the NFL’s premier play-callers. In his last two seasons as the Lions’ offensive coordinator, his teams scored a combined 88 points the week after the bye, beating the Cowboys by 38 and the Chargers by three.
The Bears have the same number of victories — two — in the week after the bye since hiring Marc Trestman as their coach in 2013, with Trestman, Nagy, Fox and Eberflus combining to go 2-10. That ties them with the Jets for the worst record after a bye week in that span. The Bears’ point differential of minus-96 is second-worst in the league, behind the Jets.
With an extra week to prepare, most teams in that span are above average; only nine besides the Bears have worse than a .500 record the week after a bye, and only four have fewer than five wins.
The Bears spent the last week trying to figure out how to stop the run and block for it. Perfecting the play of quarterback Caleb Williams, however, is the fastest path to post-bye success, both in the short and long term. Then-offensive coordinator Shane Waldron thought he had the rookie on the right path last year when the Bears took their bye in Week 7 after three straight wins with a combined score of 95-44. Williams went 4-2 in the six games before the break, with an 88.7 passer rating, nine touchdowns, five interceptions 20 sacks.
But in the three games after the bye, Williams’s passer rating fell to 64.7. He didn’t throw for a single touchdown and was sacked 18 times. The Bears went on to lose 10 straight.
The Lions had a bye in Week 5 last season, so Johnson knows the perks and the challenges of taking the week off so soon. For Williams, having the league’s earliest bye has reinforced the need to gird himself for the rest of the season.
“[This past week was about] being able to come [to Halas Hall] and make sure my body is right, make sure my mind is right,” he said. “Work on my body, make sure it’s ready for the stretch of games. We have 13 after this. So, just being able to prepare, take a day off or so and let my mind rest a little bit.”
Johnson called it the break “a good thing for us” because the coaching staff was able to get a feel of who the Bears were over the first four weeks — “what we do well and what we can sink our teeth into,” he said. “And whether we want to pivot a little bit in certain spots, whether that’s personnel-driven or schematic, that can get us better going ahead.”
When players return Monday, he’ll unveil what his coaching staff discovered. Then he’ll try to do what few Bears coaches have accomplished in the last 12 years.
