Nagy Stressed Need For Trey Burton............

Matt Nagy gives insight into tight end position


The Chicago Bears added Trey Burton to the duo of Adam Shaheen and Dion Sims at tight end. How do all three fit together?

When the Chicago Bears signed Trey Burton, it brought in some questions. The Bears just drafted Adam Shaheen last season in the second round. Way too early to give up on him, right? On top of that, Dion Sims was signed just last season to a free agent deal. The team could have got out of the deal this season with minimal loss, but decided to bring Sims back on. So, with three tight ends all apparently in the teams future plans, how will the Bears use all three.

At Nagy’s media member breakfast, he discussed some of this.

Trey Burton will play the Travis Kelce “U” role

“You can move around, do different things — it’s what we did with (Travis) Kelce (in the Chiefs),” Nagy said. “It’s an important role. It’s a position that’s easy to create some plays for.” So if you get a small nickel on him, he can use his size to body him up. If they put a bigger guy on him, we can use his speed,” Nagy said. “That’s one of the things I learned through (Chiefs coach Andy Reid), getting mismatches throughout. That’s what Trey does.”

Before the signing of Burton there was talk that Shaheen would move to that role, and that Sims would stick in the “Y” role. While that may not necessarily be the case, Shaheen will see some time in the “U” role as well.

“One thing you guys will see as we go, there’s flexibility within this offense. Trey is going to have to know the Y position as well. This is no longer a deal where you’re just playing a split-out tight end. But we as coaches need to be able to put these guys in the best position possible so they can succeed. Whatever their strength is, let’s work toward that.”

Having players with diverse skill sets and therefore being able to use them in diverse positions, alignments and situations is always going to be an advantage to the offense. It is great to see that Matt Nagy is not stuck on one idea and staying constant.

Lastly, Nagy talked about the role of Sims. With Burton and Shaheen seeing some snaps at the “Y” spot, it is tough to assume that any snaps will be available for Sims. Why did they bring him back? Nagy says that the use of all three will come in handy, as it did in Kansas City.

“If you go back (to the Chiefs) and look at what everyone would call our “13” personnel — which is one running back and three tight ends — we do that a lot,” Nagy said. “To me, that’s a part of this process with the players and trying to fit guys in where if we have a wide receiver who goes down, we can get into 13. If we have a tight end that goes down and we’re short on tight ends, now we can go into our ‘11’ personnel.”

So to summarize, the Bears are going to use all three tight ends, and a lot. They are going to mix and match the roles of Shaheen and Burton to throw teams off, and use Sims as an extra blocker or matchup identifier. Overall, the offense the Bears saw last year could be a night and day difference between the one we see next year. Nagy is much more open minded and understanding of creating specific mismatches and using versatility.

Just by his comments on the tight end situation, you can tell this offense is in good hands.