“Right now it’s sick.” After another late collapse and a 5th loss in a row, Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy is under fire. – Boston Herald

At the end of a brutal Sunday afternoon, on the heels of his team’s fifth consecutive defeat, with the aggravation of a tired city that echoed out into the evening, Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy stood at a lectern inside Soldier Field, stammering through a summary.

Nagy had to find a way to describe his team’s reluctance 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, an incredible defeat marked by confusion, chaos and collapse. Nagy had to answer for all that went wrong when the Bears – right in front of a relieving victory – again found a way to slip on a banana peel, fall into a pit of quicksand and get stuck directly under a cloud of falling anvils.

Honestly, this is how cartoonish this has become. There are new and surreal twists to the same old painful story. A once proud football franchise remains unclear and seemingly directionless.

“(This sits with me) just like it sits with everyone else,” Nagy said. “You have to finish.”

Even after a game-winning moment – Andy Dalton’s 49-yard touchdown pass to Marquise Goodwin in fourth and 11 with 1 minute and 41 seconds left – the Bears lost their 13-9 lead in just five games with Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley leading a 72-yard , game-winning touchdown drive.

Yes, Tyler Huntley. A sophomore quarterback who sat down after MVP candidate Lamar Jackson (illness) and got his first NFL start. Huntley put Devonta Freeman’s 3-yard, go-ahead touchdown run up with a 29-yard finish to Sammy Watkins on third-and-12 against a total blown coverage.

“It can not happen,” Nagy said.

But it happened. Because of course it did.

Keeping with a long track record of 40-plus-day losing streaks finds ways to consistently step into it.

Said linebacker Alec Ogletree: “Most games are lost by not being detailed and doing your job.”

Added edge rusher Robert Quinn: “Right now it’s sick.”

In the pockets around Soldier Field, chants for Nagy’s exit were higher in the fourth quarter than they ever have been.

“Fi-re Nag-y! Fi-re Nag-y! Fi-re Nag-y!”

And that’s the chorus we can print. On the question of how he can maintain faith internally at all, as his approval rating falls and outside dissatisfaction intensifies, Nagy promised determination.

“You keep fighting,” he said. “You keep believing in each other and you keep it really simple. You never stop fighting. That’s all you can do.”

Fight, of course, only goes so far. At this point, the Bears need far more.

Falling apart

Make no mistake: This was a four-stage loss. Attack, defense, special teams and coaching. A magnificent football inequality.

Do you want a sample?

The same offense left Pittsburgh two weeks ago the feeling that production increased in the second half of a loss to the Steelers meant a breakthrough that only managed 126 yards and six first setbacks during a goalless first half. It was the 21st time in 43 games over the last three seasons that Nagy’s attack failed to score a touchdown before the break. Yikes.

We’ll get more on defense soon. But after producing six sacks, coming up with an important interception in the fourth quarter and holding the Ravens to three field goals over their first 10 possessions, the Bears allowed the game-winning 72-yard touchdown drive in the final two minutes. To Tyler Huntley. Oops.

“I thought we stuck to our game plan and executed it well,” Ogletree said. “All the way to the end.”

Cairo Santos pulled a 40-yard field-goal attempt wide left in the first quarter. It was a costly miss that completed a solid opening drive. In the fourth quarter, the Bears punt team was leaky enough ahead to let Ravens receiver James Proche II partially block a punt, giving the Ravens possession on the Bears’ 45-yard line to launch an important field-goal drive.

And coaching? My God, where are we going to start at all?

How does a team look that comes from its farewell week this flat again?

How did he manage to find any rhythm in the five drives rookie Justin Fields led before suffered injured ribs in the second half?

Why is there always such an unforgivable sloppiness as the 12-man-on-the-field offense against the defense in the third quarter or fourth-and-6 false start on left tackle Jason Peters immediately before Dalton’s preparatory touchdown pass?

Even with their own injury problems, how did the Bears not take advantage of a home game against a Ravens team that missed Jackson, top receiver Marquise Brown, running backs JK Dobbins and Gus Edwards, left tackle Ronnie Stanley, cornerbacks Marcus Peters, Anthony Averett and Jimmy Smith, safety DeShon Elliott and defensive lineman Derek Wolfe?

In addition, it is never a good sign when your coach at his post-match press conference is asked to explain the head-scratching use of all three of his timeouts in the second half. But here we are.

An untimely malfunction

Nagy spent his first timeout early in the fourth quarter during a chaotic sequence immediately after the Bears attempted a third-and-1 deep shot for Darnell Mooney. When Mooney failed to secure the ball thoroughly, the Bears’ punt-or-go decision involved more miscommunication and confusion than even the craziest episode of “Three’s Company.”

The chaos included – what else? – an untimely malfunction of Nagy’s headset while trying to provide input.

“I thought I was talking to the guys,” he said, “and I was not.”

Nagy took three questions and used 292 words after the game to try to spell that episode. Cliff’s Notes version? Something in the direction of the headset error did not allow Nagy to join the conversation, so he chose to tip to play the field position game. But when the headset came on again, he reconsidered and wanted to stay aggressive and go for it.

Alas, after all this and after a timeout, David Montgomery’s run from a wild formation on fourth and 1st was stopped without a win.

“That’s the piece we had (ready) all week long,” Nagy said. “It’s not a new game or anything we’ve come up with. If you get it, it looks good. If you do not understand it, it looks bad.”

The Bears’ final timeout came after Goodwin’s touchdown put them ahead by four with 1:41 left. Third-class math and all the NFL analysis charts known suggest that a two-point conversion attempt is the only logical option. Still, the Bears sent their kicking unit on the field, and then had to use a timeout to get the attack back out there. Then they still failed to convert.

Asked directly why he would ever send the kicking unit out in that situation, Nagy replied, “It’s part of the process of, ‘Do you go up by five (points) or do you go up by six?’ That is the communication part. ”

Right. Of course. And Nagy certainly realizes that there is no advantage to going ahead by five at the time of the game. He has to, right? Still, the fact speaks that the Bears were not ready for even the simplest situations of the late game. About everything.

‘It sounds comical’

The Bears have one of the league’s most abysmal offenses, averaging just 287.9 ​​yards and 1.6 touchdowns per game. match. Their defense, though more respectable, has allowed decisive goals late in the fourth quarter of the last three games, turning potential victories into disappointing losses.

And from a coaching standpoint, there is so little evidence that this staff, with Nagy at the helm, is on track to find solutions to get this team back in the championship battle.

In the coming days, there may be a better explanation from Halas Hall of what went wrong with Watkins’ game-changing 29-yard catch down to the 3-yard line with 25 seconds left. At third and 12th, with a lead of four points and a blitz called, the only thing the Bears could not afford was to give up a big game.

Still with Huntley scrambling to the right, Watkins snuck up on the right sideline all alone, revealed from the snap and with certainty Deon Bush too far away to close the distance.

“He was wide open,” Huntley said. “I was glad I saw him.”

Added Ogletree: “In times of crisis, this is where you need to be. Today we did not go out there and finish the job.”

No wonder so many Bears players seemed so heartbroken immediately after this recent insane loss.

Quinn seemed really annoyed at the way the Bears let the game slip away. He shook his head in disbelief, describing the defense’s mindset and dialogue on the track on the way out to the final ride.

“It sounds comical now to think about,” Quinn said. “It was to make sure the guys managed their one-eleventh so they didn’t score. And well? They scored.”

Goodwin acknowledged that he felt dizzy over the events of the day and needed time to better process what it all meant.

“It’s like when your boyfriend breaks up with you,” he said. “You’re fine and she’s just dumping you out of nowhere. You know what I mean? You just have to jump back. That’s the best way I can explain it.”

Predictably, the Bears pulled out all the practical discussion points about quickly turning the page and looking in the mirror and preparing for the next game with the right mindset. But at 3-7 and win-free since October 10, the hopelessness is growing.

The undefeated Detroit Lions are next on the schedule. In a few days, the Bears will fly to Detroit for a Thanksgiving reunion with the division punching bag. But that may not necessarily be a good thing. Not the way this team does not work. Not with how incoherent and depressed it seems to be.

What if in a short week of dwindling emotional reserves, the Bears lose another dud and lose to the Lions under Nagy’s guard?

Can not happen, right?

But if it does, what would the consequences be?