Andy Reid can’t stop praising Matt Nagy

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid has the most branches from his coaching tree working in the NFL today. His first disciple to get a head coaching gig this offseason, the Chicago Bears’ Matt Nagy, is trying to follow in the footsteps of his last assistant to move on to his own team, Doug Pederson with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Pederson is the play caller in Philadelphia and they won the Super Bowl in his second year on the job. Nagy is planning on calling the plays for the Bears and Reid thinks he’ll “do a great job, too.”

Pederson, like Nagy, was a former offensive coordinator for Reid, and each was also gifted the ability to call plays during some of their time working on Reid’s staff. He gave Pederson the second halves of some games in 2015, and he gave Nagy the last five games of the 2017 season.

Reid spoke with the media yesterday at the NFL Annual League Meetings in Orlando, Florida, and the current Bears’ head coach came up a few times.

“They’re different guys but both of them are very intelligent. Great football minds,” Reid said of Pederson and Nagy. “They love the game. But they are different, they’re different guys. They have different personalities.”

Reid was asked if he saw Nagy’s potential to be a head coach when he first started working with him in Philadelphia. “He’s got a great energy about him and the more you’re around him you’ll find that out and it’s consistent. He is as detailed as anybody. That part he came with.”

Nagy was with Reid for ten years, five each with the Eagles and the Chiefs.

Nagy has built an offensive think-tank in Chicago, something that he learned from his time working with Andy Reid, and he plans on having an open door policy when it comes to play designs. The “Beautiful Mind Board” was utilized in Kansas City and it’s something Nagy will bring to Chicago too.

Here’s Reid explaining what it means to him and his coaching process.

I’ve been lucky to have guys that love football. I love talking football, high school coaches, I don’t care I’ll talk to anybody about it. So we would get in there and put our ideas on this board and I wanted them to grow and be able to develop their own stuff. You kind of know when these guys have got it when they can put up their own stuff up and not be stealing from somewhere else. This is the primary defense, this is the secondary that this team is running and I think this would be good right here and create their own play. You have a good one right there [in Matt Nagy]. He’s got a great mind and is very good.”

Quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, and the entire revamped Bears offense, will benefit from the open-mindedness taking place among Chicago’s offensive coaches.