March 28, 2024


Analysis

Hub Arkush: Bears offense isn’t the only thing flummoxing Nick Foles these days

Sideline chats and pregame production meetings seem to be an issue too

Chicago Bears quarterback Nick Foles fires a pass during their Week 5 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Soldier Field in Chicago.

The biggest challenge of playing on Monday night is the short week it leaves teams returning to a normal Sunday work schedule the following week.

When you take a beating like the Bears did from the Rams and sprinkle in a little controversy to boot as Brian Griese and Nick Foles did the other night, time spent cleaning up the mess makes things even more difficult.

Even ink-stained wretches like me feel the pain as I immediately dove right into the game film – and trust me, that was painful – to get you all my weekly film study report card before it became ancient history.

Toward the end of my second viewing I realized I was giving everybody F’s and decided it might be wise to take a pause.

The weekly report card will be back next Monday/Tuesday in its normal space.

Right now I’m looking for a way to put the whole Griese-Foles affair to bed, something we know Matt Nagy and Foles would love to see happen as soon as possible.

But before that occurs we can’t exactly pretend it didn’t happen either and it would be journalistic malpractice to ignore an obvious tumor if in fact one exists.

I don’t believe one does, but remember Foles first gave us pause with his animated conversation with Nagy late in the Bucs game before telling us it was much ado about nothing, just his belief it is crucial for the quarterback to have input into play calls by sharing what he’s seeing and feeling on the field.

Nagy agreed, nothing to see here, which seemed fine but I did put that one away nagged by the thought it wasn’t a conversation we would have been likely to see Foles having with a Bill Belichick, Sean Payton, Sean McVay, or probably not Andy Reid either.

Fast forward to what for purposes of this piece we’ll just call “The Meeting.”

Was Foles previewing the game by telling Griese at times he is being asked to do things that just can’t be done under the kind of fire he will be taking?

Immediately following the game Foles said it was a misunderstanding.

Wednesday Nagy told us, “Nick and I, we had a long talk, a very good talk about just clarifying what I guess was interpreted by Brian.”

When Foles was asked when that conversation took place he said it was immediately following his locker room press conference Monday night explaining, “Even though that wasn't true what Brian said, it was important for Matt, coach Nagy and I, to speak about what was said for our relationship.”

Note Foles has now gone from a misunderstanding to not true, a fairly significant change.

Let’s cut to the chase because we will likely never know exactly what Foles and Griese discussed or who if anyone messed up.

Nagy has made it as clear as he can, “For us, we're in such a good spot with our relationship. It's very, very healthy. Everything we do, we do together. I mean that's who we are as a team and as a culture.”

Foles insisted he agrees.

“I have a great relationship with him. We had a really good conversation," Foles said. "That's what's important is having those relationships with your coaches to where you can actually go in there and talk and talk like men and put it all out there on the table so you can move forward in the appropriate way. So it was really good and I'm glad we talked.”

I’m glad they did too and now we can all move on but there is one last thing.

While I’m really happy for these two that they have such a great relationship, it has little or nothing to do with whether or not they can get their offense fixed.

What does matter is if Foles doesn’t believe in or have complete trust in what Nagy wants to and is doing, and he keeps leaving these breadcrumbs suggesting that he may not, the relationship that does matter is never going to work.

The only place they can really put this to rest is on the football field and Bears fans can only hope they find a way to get that work started this Sunday.

Hub Arkush

Hub Arkush

Hub Arkush was the Senior Bears Analyst for Shaw Local News Network and ShawLocal.com.