KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In mid-July final 12 months, simply earlier than the beginning of coaching camp, Matt Nagy logged onto Zoom round 4 p.m. and did not finish the assembly till 9.
For 5 hours he heard quotes from 40-some nameless folks in his skilled teaching profession who had the liberty to inform it like it’s. Unfiltered and unvarnished, Nagy acquired to listen to all of it.
“I did not know the way it was going to go, but it surely was one of the crucial profound issues in 5 hours I’ve ever completed in my complete life. It was revealing, simply highly effective,” Nagy informed CBS Sports activities in November. “I imply, anyone that is going to take a seat right here and take heed to all the pieces that 40 persons are saying that you may have completed higher or additionally issues that you simply did effectively.”
The previous Chicago Bears head coach and now Kansas Metropolis Chiefs offensive coordinator lastly did a “blind spot” report. His buddy and longtime NFL reporter Laura Okmin has been providing them to coaches for years, and that provide had been there for Nagy for the reason that Bears fired him after the 2021 season.
After 4 years and a Tremendous Bowl loss and just one head-coaching interview final cycle, Nagy determined to take her up on the supply. She requested him for 40 names of individuals from his profession who she might contact, and they’d keep nameless and be capable of converse freely. “This is not the Nagy fan membership,” he says. And after three months of constructing calls throughout the nation, Okmin completed the report.
He wished “the dangerous” first, however he says she began with some softer critiques earlier than stepping into the meat of it. By the tip — all the nice and all of the dangerous — Nagy discovered himself saying “that is truthful” to plenty of the quotes she learn to him.
“I get emotional about that once I give it some thought through the years,” Nagy says. “It hasn’t been straightforward, but it surely’s been actually wholesome and good for me. And so once you take the blame off of everyone else and you set the blame on your self, you are capable of be actual … which I did on July twelfth of this previous summer season.”
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Nagy interviews Thursday for the vacant Titans and Raiders head teaching jobs, and on Friday he has one with the Cardinals. It is doable he will get extra seems to be as groups proceed their first spherical of interviews into subsequent week.
Although Nagy acquired his first head-coaching gig largely due to his success calling performs for Andy Reid’s Chiefs in 2017, he has not referred to as the performs in his second go-round in Kansas Metropolis. He returned to Okay.C. in 2022 and have become the OC for a second time in 2023, coordinating the offense to 2 Tremendous Bowls and profitable one among them.
This season did not go as deliberate. The Chiefs hovered round .500 all season lengthy after a 2024 season the place they gained each shut recreation they had been in. The Chiefs had been eradicated from playoff rivalry in Week 15 simply minutes after Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL, and so they completed with a 6-11 document on six straight losses. Kansas Metropolis’s offense ranked twentieth in yards and twenty first in factors.
NFL staff homeowners consumed by public relations wins could balk at hiring a non-play-calling offensive coordinator coming off a season like that, however Reid has stated previously that Nagy was one of the best teaching prospect he ever had in his teaching tree. And Reid thinks Nagy shall be even higher the second time round.
“He is skilled a corporation,” Reid says, “he is skilled how you’re employed with an proprietor, he is skilled the way you do the personnel facet of it, how you must work with a GM and the way you must be on the identical web page, collectively, with that. And he is needed to cope with gamers and coaches, and everyone has points. So, there is a human aspect to it. And he is completed all of that and I feel he is able to roll, and get on the market, and knock it out once more.”
The Bears employed Nagy in 2018, and he led them to a 12-4 document and a spot within the NFC playoffs that in the present day lives on because the Double Doink. Regardless of, Nagy earned NFL Coach of the Yr honors and the Bears, by all appearances, had their coach of the longer term after ending a seven-year playoff drought.
The staff was celebrating victories in Membership Dub, the trade-up for Mitch Trubisky was paying off, Nagy was a superb play-caller-coach and the Bears had their first NFC North title in eight years.
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The following season Chicago could not recuperate from a four-game dropping streak midseason and missed the playoffs at 8-8. It was throughout that 12 months that, upon reflection, Nagy says he began to lose his means a bit. As an alternative of being himself, he started getting slowed down within the trivialities. Halfway by means of the 2020 season, he handed off play-calling duties to his offensive coordinator.
“When I’ve all these obligations and also you’re along with your teaching workers and also you’re virtually like an offensive coordinator, although you do not have that title,” Nagy says now, “it is my job to have the ability to step again, empower the folks which are with you, your teaching workers, your gamers and be a head coach. And so I used to be doing each and it simply grew to become inconsistent. It wasn’t constant. I felt like on the time it was the precise factor to do.”
The Bears snuck into the playoffs because the seven seed however misplaced within the wild-card spherical. The following season, Nagy once more started the season calling performs and once more handed them off. By Thanksgiving, it grew to become clear to observers he was teaching in his ultimate season in Chicago. The Bears fired him on the finish of the 12 months with a profession 34-31 document, two playoff appearances and just one dropping season.
Okmin got here to Nagy in regards to the blind spot report. “I feel it could possibly be actually good for you,” he remembers her telling him. However he wasn’t fairly prepared for it. Not but.
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Final 12 months the one staff to interview Nagy for a head-coaching job was the Jets. In his three years again in Kansas Metropolis he gained a Tremendous Bowl as quarterbacks coach, gained one other as offensive coordinator and had simply misplaced to the Eagles in Tremendous Bowl LIX. He entered the 2025 season with an unknown future on the ultimate 12 months of his cope with the Chiefs, and he determined he was mentally ready for this report.
In July simply forward of coaching camp, Okmin and Nagy acquired on a Zoom. She began studying off the quotes.
Somebody stated his genuineness and morals made it really feel such as you’re the one individual within the room once you’re talking with him. One other, presumably a participant, stated that when he retires, the one coach he would invite to his retirement social gathering is Nagy.
Then somebody says he has such a giant coronary heart that he listens to too many individuals. He says he must preserve schedules tighter, like how Andy Reid does it.
“It is simple to be overwhelmed in that chair, particularly the primary time you are in that chair,” somebody says about Nagy on this report. “It’s a must to lean in your folks. You’ll be able to’t do all of it. It’s a must to delegate. He took on much more duties than what he wanted to.”
I ask Nagy if meaning he did not belief the folks round him.
“I feel, massive image for me, I wanted to have extra belief. It wasn’t that I did not belief them, I trusted them. I wanted to have extra belief,” he says. “I wanted to have the ability to allow them to do and empower them and allow them to do what they’re nice at. And once you attempt to go round and do extra just a little bit right here or there, you may have 100 totally different distractions. It takes you away from what you have to do finest, which is allow them to do their factor, be the pinnacle coach, and be there to help them, be there for the gamers, and hit the totally different silos throughout the group as a frontrunner.”
The quotes continued. One individual lastly broaches the play-calling elephant within the room.
“Take an extended arduous take a look at calling performs,” the individual says. “He is nice at it, however I feel his management, imaginative and prescient and the way in which he touches folks and communicates with folks may have a stronger affect as a result of it is uncommon. In case you’re not calling performs, you might be seeing round corners extra and it simply takes a lot time and it will get straightforward to get misplaced.”
But when he is this offensive guru, should not he preserve calling performs? That was his calling card to get the primary job, in spite of everything. Are you not going to name performs if and once you grow to be a head coach subsequent time, I ask.
“I’ve at all times been taught to by no means say at all times and by no means. However actually, for me, I am actually intrigued by the CEO management function,” Nagy says. “Numerous stuff that got here again from the constructive facet within the blind spots was simply that they really feel like, and I do consider that plenty of my strengths is from the management facet of having the ability to construct relationships, empower folks, be a frontrunner of individuals, and allow them to do their deal, do the delegating and empower.
“I am actually leaning in direction of extra of the, rent unbelievable workers round you, allow them to do what they do after which go round and be of the CEO method. And I’ve during the last two years actually spent a while speaking to some coaches and a few folks on that management facet of men that coaches that are not possibly calling performs and extra of the CEO model method. And it has been very intriguing and neat to listen to.”
Nagy acquired loads of reward on this report, however after we sit down with each other I wish to hear the constructive criticism. He did not wait years to do that report back to be informed how nice he’s.
These critiques could possibly be powerful to listen to in case you’re on the receiving finish of them, however they appeared pretty delicate to me. So I ask him, what was the toughest quote to listen to on this report?
Somebody stated that when a participant screws one thing up, Nagy’s feelings can come off like he took it personally, or that he would not consider within the participant. He remembers the quote being one thing like “as I can provide any person perception in what they’ll do, he simply wants to verify together with his feelings and all the pieces that he would not take it away from them.”
Nagy has at all times been aggressive. He discovered in highschool as a participant to maintain his feelings in test as a result of he was the quarterback. Whereas he tried to steer by his actions, he additionally wasn’t shy to let his voice be heard. And as a coach, there is a steadiness in that.
So when Nagy acquired that criticism again, that impacted him.
“That hit me, as a result of I am a constructive human being. I consider in positivity,” Nagy says. “However you additionally do should have a darkish facet. You might have to have the ability to let these guys know there’s acquired to be an accountability. How do you present that, and the way do you give that accountability to the gamers and to your coaches?
“I do know this is not a giant powerful phrase that lots of people like to make use of, however I used it so much in Chicago… So long as they know you like them, then they’re going to do so much for you. And so balancing the way you critique them, the way you criticize, sporting your feelings in your sleeve, that is the place I feel for me, I actually been attempting to work on that. Even now, in the present day as a coach in Kansas Metropolis, how can I be one of the best coach for the gamers that I do not take that away from them?”
That could possibly be simpler stated than completed for a coach. Patrick Mahomes had heard his offensive coordinator underwent this blind spot report however did not know most of the specifics. I requested him what the most important distinction is between Coach Matt Nagy he labored together with his rookie 12 months and the Coach Matt Nagy in the present day.
“He is discovered — and I feel he already knew — however discovered much more on the best way to simply speak and work together with an increasing number of folks and be capable of go on the market and have his voice within the offense, but additionally get the voice from the gamers, which I feel is absolutely cool,” Mahomes says. “And you’ll see how excited guys are to go on the market and play when you may have receivers drawing up their very own performs and tight ends drawing up their very own performs. And they won’t be precisely what they drew up, however they’ve their imprint on the offense, which I feel will get guys fired as much as go on the market and execute the performs.”
🔎 What Matt Nagy discovered from his ‘blind spot’ report
| Space | The Quote | The Adjustment |
|---|---|---|
| Management model | “It’s a must to lean in your folks. You’ll be able to’t do all of it.” | Clearer delegation and a CEO-style focus |
| Play-calling | “In case you’re not calling performs, you are seeing round corners extra.” | Openness to main with out calling performs |
| Emotional reactions | “I’ve to verify I do not take perception away from them.” | Extra intentional emotional management |
The Chiefs season ended earlier than anybody there anticipated, however clearly there’s nonetheless sufficient curiosity in Nagy that almost half the groups with openings are contemplating him as their head coach. And he is taking the teachings he discovered by means of this blind spot report into these digital interviews this week that might flip into in-person interviews subsequent week.
As he mirrored again on the report, he says that up till that July day, he felt that 90 % of himself felt good, wholesome and “healed” from all the pieces that occurred in Chicago years earlier.
“However there was a ten % of me that was nonetheless hanging on, and I did not know the way a lot that 10 % meant to me,” he admits. “Once I was completed with the five-hour Zoom of studying my blind spots, I felt like there was a large amount of closure on me now having affirmation of what I do know. That 10 % was hanging on to me and that it is virtually just like the final chapter of the e-book. The e-book is closed. Now it is go time.”
