Ryan Pace, Matt Nagy, Mitch Trubisky hit bottom in Bears’ embarrassing season

The Bears have staggered for weeks, and with six games to go, there’s no hope for the playoffs. That’s not an unusual predicament for this organization during the last three decades, but this epic failure is different.

It’s more than failure, really. To whatever extent it’s reasonable to call a situation in sports a crisis, that’s what they’re facing at Halas Hall right now.

There’s no bigger disappointment in the NFL than the Bears, who came off an NFC North title as Super Bowl contenders and rolled into training camp talking dynasty.

Instead, at 4-6 and fresh off another embarrassment, this implosion is the career low for the team’s three most prominent figures: general manager Ryan Pace, coach Matt Nagy and quarterback Mitch Trubisky.

It has become a national shame, and surely the rest of the country is reeling from what it endured Sunday night. With the Bears down 10-0 at halftime, NBC’s Al Michaels described it as “a typical Bears game” and slid them a backhanded compliment, saying their offense looked “slow, but not as slow as they have been recently.”

In months, Nagy has gone from the next big thing and Coach of the Year to spinning his wheels in search of solutions that always elude him. Trubisky has tumbled from top draft pick to Exhibit A in the case to replace Pace.

That brings us to the Bears’ latest debacle: their haphazard handling of a hip injury so severe that it prompted Nagy to pull Trubisky in the fourth quarter against the Rams, but one that healed enough in three days for him to be a full participant in practice Wednesday and a possible starter Sunday against the Giants.

Trubisky took a hard shot to the right hip just before halftime against the Rams but didn’t appear gimpy. He played through it into the fourth quarter before a surprise appearance by Chase Daniel.

Trubisky didn’t go to the medical tent, there’s no footage of Daniel warming up despite NBC’s multitude of cameras and the broadcast cut to Trubisky several times during the Rams’ touchdown drive with no indication anything was amiss. It prompted a speculative but logical digression by Michaels and Cris Collinsworth as the national audience listened.

They pointed out that career backup Daniel isn’t the long-term answer for the Bears, but Collins-worth suggested, “This might be the long-term answer from Matt Nagy about what he thinks of his quarterback.” He wondered if it was “a desperation move” to spur a comeback and floated the possibility of a fracture in the Nagy-Trubisky relationship.

“It is opening Pandora’s box about Mitch Trubisky with this move,” he said.

There were a lot of thoughts floating around during those moments of uncertainty that the Bears wanted to dispel, and the team sent word of Trubisky’s hip issue a few plays after Daniel entered.

It’s likely that the injury and Trubisky’s play factored into Nagy’s decision, but Nagy wouldn’t want to acknowledge the latter publicly and leave Trubisky exposed to the criticism. He also wouldn’t want to reverse a recent declaration that he would never pull Trubisky over performance.

And, quite frankly, Nagy is doing his job by protecting him.

Coaches aren’t fully transparent — not even nice guys like Nagy — and no one expects them to be. Giving partial truths and positive spins in news conferences isn’t even wrong. It’s part of the deal. Nagy can’t divulge everything he thinks about his team, including the quarterback his embattled boss drafted before he got here.

Trubisky completed 24 of 43 passes for 190 yards with a touchdown pass and an interception for a 65.1 rating with the benefit of a mostly clean pocket. A typical game, as Michaels would say.

There have been 91 300-yard passing games this season, none by Trubisky. No starting quarterback averages fewer net yards per pass than his 5.6.

Any improvement he has made under Nagy, a touted quarterback guru, isn’t discernible to the naked eye. And an offensive-minded coach should know better than to have him throw 43 times.

Or 45 times, like he did while losing to the Packers.

Or 54 in defeat against the Saints.

Trubisky’s receivers let him down at times and the offensive line has been unsteady, but he’s not a player who can overcome that. Unless everything else goes perfectly, he’s not winning.

The other two top quarterbacks from his draft class, Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, lift their teams. When everything is on fire, they find a way.

Every great game those two put up makes Pace look worse for bypassing them. And if the Bears are about to start over at quarterback and attempt a significant overhaul, it must be asked if they’re substantially better off than when Pace started in 2015. He’s the architect of a lost season with no easy answers to ensure the next one is better.

It’s nearing time to decide whether these three lose their jobs over this fiasco.

Nagy is safe for at least one more season. Pace has a contract through 2021, but how could the Bears let him choose their next quarterback? And the fact that they need a next quarterback — plus a veteran to bridge the gap next season — puts a period on the Trubisky era.

Those will be Thanksgiving-dinner topics in Chicago next week, and it’s not at all what the Bears wanted the conversation to be at this point.