There’s a key phrase in that question: eight games remaining. That’s a lot of time and should provide plenty of additional evidence about the team’s direction. It can’t be ignored, even amid the excitement Fields is generating, that Nagy’s teams have suffered losing streaks of at least four games in three consecutive seasons and, including the playoffs, have lost 14 of their last 20 games. It can’t be disregarded that the only NFC team the Bears are ahead of are the winless Detroit Lions. It shouldn’t be overlooked that the side of the ball Nagy prides himself in overseeing ranks 31st in yards per game and dead last by a wide margin in passing offense. The Bears are also one of only seven teams through Week 10 with a point differential worse than minus-70. Most of the others — the New York Jets, Houston Texans, Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins — are NFL punchlines. Ten months ago, McCaskey and Phillips made vague pleas for progress in 2021 but steered away from publicly declaring the benchmarks they’ll be using to evaluate Nagy and Pace. Said McCaskey: “All four of us will know whether there’s been sufficient improvement or sufficient progress to continue past 2021.” To this point, it’s impossible to say the Bears have made sufficient progress. They do, however, have eight games remaining to change that conversation.
