NEWSLETTER
Everyone has their own unique way to cope with heartbreak.
I, for one, indulge in all of the sweets I can get my hands on. Ice cream, cookies, cakes, you name it. Then I throw on some jams and play video games. Anything to keep me busy and my hands away from sending regrettable texts.
Apparently, Chicago Bears Head Coach Matt Nagy has some unique methods of his own:
ICYMI: Tarik Cohen tells @AdamSchein Bears HC Matt Nagy shows the team the last few seconds of the playoff game vs the Eagles during team meetings so they "never forget that hurt" pic.twitter.com/xc9lWMyid8
— Mad Dog Sports Radio (@MadDogRadio) June 19, 2019
Bears running back Tarik Cohen confirmed that his head coach has shown footage of the final seconds of the team’s playoff loss to the Eagles “often” throughout the offseason. The idea behind the madness is to drive home the pain to everyone on the 2019 Bears. No, seriously.
“He shows us the crowd reactions, our reactions from the sideline, and he just tells us to never forget that hurt,” Cohen said. “We want to get back to that place, but have a different outcome. That drives us, and motivates us to get through practice every day.”
Using those images as a motivational tool instead of moving on the past is certainly one way to deal with football-related heartbreak. But if you ask former NFL head coach turned league analyst Jeff Fisher, it’s not a path he would follow. Fisher knows a thing or two about soul-crushing football losses. Remember, Fisher’s Titans came one-yard short of a score that could have led to a tied game in Super Bowl XXXIV and the team never got that close again. But rather than dwell on the defeat and use it as something to push his team, Fisher kept it in the rear-view mirror.
“Actually, it took me about eight years to watch it,” Fisher said, via NFL.com’s Grant Gordon. “We just put it behind us and I hadn’t seen it. It was one of those deals where it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, you go on and we actually had a better team the next year. The challenge was getting them focused and keeping them focused late in the season because they wanted to get right back, so no, I didn’t show it to them.”
Perhaps Fisher is onto something. After all, Nagy and the Bears eventually have to move on and play games of consequence in 2019. The franchise can’t dwell on the double-doink (and resounding thud) that ended last season. Then again, who’s to say Fisher’s line of thinking was the correct one? It’s not like there is any hard evidence to support his method of ignoring the past is the right one. The Titans were one-and-done in the playoffs a year later, then missed the postseason altogether two years after their near-miss in the Super Bowl.
Maybe Nagy is going a bit far with this odd obsession over showing the double-doink to this year’s team. But he is the same guy who preaches being obsessed, so this seems pretty on-brand for him. The Bears certainly haven’t run away from their kicking problems. In fact, they’ve done everything possible to tackle them head-on in unique ways. Maybe there is something valuable in Nagy berating the point here with the kicking situation. I won’t rule it out.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always felt as if I learned some good life lessons by re-tracing the steps I made in my missteps, which I believe has kept me from continuing to do the wrong thing time and time again. It’s not perfect, but it works for me more often than not, It’s possible that it could work for the Bears moving forward. Guess there is just one way to find out.
