Nick Foles is not the only one who has had issues with the team
Then there is Allen Robinson standing on the sidelines while the offense is on the field in the fourth quarter. He had to watch as his teammates kept hope alive (barely) that they could win this game. After a failed set of downs, the cameras show an angry Allen Robinson. Presumably, he is fuming because he believes the Bears should have their most accomplished if not their best offensive player, himself, on the field at this crucial juncture.
It could certainly have made a difference in keeping the chains moving or not. I suspect there was also some embarrassment from being shut out during this very critical part of the game. Last season I often wrote the Bears players on offense, especially the offensive line, looked dispirited.
I concluded they were mainly demoralized by Nagy’s lack of faith in their run game. Coach Nagy, basically, replaced the run with one-dimensional WCO style short passes. Of course, this approach failed.
Flashing forward to this moment with an angry Allen Robinson on the sidelines reminded me of how frustrating it must be for Chicago Bears players on offense to watch this Nagy soap opera with play calling. If they see what I see, it is Nagy indulging himself by using unorthodox plays that do not build off of each other, and as a result, they fail.
It is possible that Nagy’s constant changing of personnel is in part a way to make sure Foles does not call an audible into a play that does not have Nagy’s approval. I suspect his fear is that if something goes right he will not get credit for it.
If all of this conjecture is on target, it is quite possible players’ discontent has now morphed into open anger. The catalyst for this must have been when Nick Foles got into a heated sideline exchange with Nagy during the Bucs game.
In typical Nagy fashion, he stunted the Bears offensive momentum that had been built using a hurry-up offense. Nagy did this by sending in some new personnel which slowed them down. Then when the play gets run, Foles gets sacked.
This led to a very unhappy quarterback getting in Nagy’s face about it all. This exchange appears to have opened a Chicago Bears Pandora’s Box of repressed anger towards their head coach. The anger created by his bad decisions is seemingly leaking out into the open.