Why don’t the Bears fire coaches midseason? History says Matt Nagy will finish rest of 2021 season

Matt Nagy may have the best Christmas gift of them all: Job security.

There are very few guarantees in the NFL, but there may be just one: A Bears head coach will last the duration of an NFL season. Even if you’re Nagy.

In all, there have been just 16 head coaches in Chicago Bears history and not a single coach, no matter how bad things got, have been given their walking papers during an NFL season. Rumors have swirled surrounding Nagy’s job security this season, but Bears owner George McCaskey nipped those rumors in the bud prior to Thanksgiving.

NFL coaches being fired midseason is something of a rarity, but for the Bears, it’s nonexistent. Here’s why:

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Why don’t the Bears fire coaches midseason?

In their 100-year history, the Bears have never fired a head coach midseason, for reasons unknown: Whether it’s tradition, reputation, policy or class, in their prestigious, lengthy history, they’ve never sacked a boss midseason.

Even though the Bears have fielded some very bad head coaches in recent years — John Fox, Marc Trestman as two of the the predecessors to the Nagy era — not one has ever been fired midseason. They’ve all lasted at least the regular season before being sent walking.

There are only a handful of teams in the NFL who have yet to fire a coach midseason, with the Bears as one of them. The other two are model NFL franchises: the Steelers and Ravens. The Bears’ standing as an NFL original likely plays into that.

Coincidentally, since the AFL-NFL merger, Nagy owns the second-highest winning percentage of any Bears head coach at .583, trailing only Mike Ditka (.631).

While reports swirled that Nagy’s job was on the line prior to the Bears-Lions Thanksgiving matchup, Chicago owner George McCaskey reinforced to players that there was no truth to the report, seemingly securing Nagy’s job for the foreseeable future.

To that end, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the Bears are also unlikely to fire Nagy during the season, barring something unforeseen.

In truth, in-season head coaching firings are pretty rare in the NFL: Oftentimes, coaching staffs don’t carry NFL-quality interim coaches, and changing over a system to provide a spark for a team for an unproven guy is never a safe or secure change one way or the other.