On Monday nights, soccer stops.
The night after the Bears play their regular-season video games, coach Matt Nagy calls for that his teaching employees pause its movie research and game-planning for one hour. At 5 p.m., coaches’ relations stream into Halas Hall and onto the statement deck overlooking the follow discipline.
Dinner — pizza and Buffalo wings — will get delivered.
The households get to know one another. Kids play on the sector and their fathers take part — an essential, albeit quick, respite from the all-consuming common season.
Welcome to Family Night.
“We tell coaches to shut everything down and go be a dad,” Nagy mentioned. “We shut our minds down for one hour. Trust me, there’s plenty of time for football.”
It’s good for the children — and for the coaches.
Nagy bought the concept from his own residence life. He and his spouse, Stacey, have 4 boys, ages 11 to 15. Their lives are appropriately hectic. But they shut every thing down for Family Fridays. They flip off their telephones, have dinner collectively and catch up.
There’s a lot to speak about.
Brayden, 15, is the accountable, caring “caretaker” and a budding golf nut, Nagy mentioned. Tate, 13, is the aggressive introvert. Outsiders would suppose he’s quiet, Nagy mentioned, however he makes use of the silence to watch his environment.
Fraternal twins Jaxon and Jett, who turned 11 in late August, are completely different. Jaxon has “zero filter” and “is the one that’s going to keep myself and my wife on my toes,” Nagy mentioned. Jett is the jokester and the almost definitely to finish up on “American Idol” or “The Voice,” his dad mentioned.
It’s unattainable for an NFL head coach to be “Super Dad.” Stacey, whom Nagy met after they have been in highschool 25 years in the past, does many of the heavy lifting, particularly in the course of the season. But Nagy has made certain his 4 boys are by no means distant. They’re ballboys throughout coaching camp — they run go routes with their dad and gamers after follow — and fixtures across the Bears all season.
“They’re just like our little brothers,” inside linebacker Danny Trevathan mentioned.
One of the most effective items of parenting recommendation Nagy obtained got here from David Culley, the Ravens’ assistant head coach, who labored with Nagy on the Eagles and Chiefs. When Nagy was a younger coach in Philadelphia, Culley, a father of two, instructed him essentially the most invaluable factor he may give his kids is his time, despite the fact that he could be more and more capable of afford lavish presents.
“He said, ‘You know, Matt, with your kids, in this profession, it’s not about the presents; it’s about your presence,’ ” Nagy mentioned. “That’s always stuck with me.”
Truth is, Nagy at all times wished an enormous household. And he knew he would need his youngsters round him as a lot as attainable.
Nagy is an solely youngster. His dad and mom divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother moved them 2 half hours away to be nearer to her household in Manheim, Pennsylvania.
Even for somebody with Nagy’s dynamic persona — he makes certain his youngsters shake arms and make eye contact — it proved to be lonely.
“It was just me and my mom,” Nagy mentioned. “I at all times was sort of envious of different households that had their brothers and sisters hanging out, enjoying within the yard, doing all that.
“I at all times instructed myself that if I ever have a possibility to be lucky sufficient to have youngsters, it’s at all times going to be an important factor that I do.”
Nagy calls himself a household man with household values. That was the case earlier than he began teaching — all 4 youngsters have been born earlier than Nagy landed his first full-time job — and it didn’t change when life bought extra hectic.
As a Chiefs assistant, he would use chartered flights as a possibility to put in writing in his journal. He took notes about what he discovered on the sector that week and what it could take to be a head coach. He additionally chronicled how every of his boys have been progressing and the way that made him really feel.
Nagy was employed final yr to vary the tradition at Halas Hall. Family is as a lot part of his…