Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy has assured former CFL quarterback Henry Burris he wants him back on his coaching staff for the 2021 NFL season.
Burris was hired as a coach for the 2020 season after he spent training camp with the Bears as part of the Bill Walsh diversity coaching fellowship.
“I had a talk with the head coach, Matt Nagy, and he definitely wants me back. He said he was going to get back in touch with me, but I am going to be a part of his staff heading into 2021,” Burris told CTV Ottawa.
“As far as what my role will be, I’ll find that out in the upcoming days, possibly by the end of the week. Now it’s just kind of sitting on the side and waiting. But more importantly, coach told me when we got off the phone, ‘Go be a dad and enjoy time with your family, and we’ll talk soon and we’ll get things set up for the future.”
The Bears went 8-8 last season earning the seventh and final playoff spot in the NFC. Chicago lost 21-9 to New Orleans in the Wild Card Round. It’s a familiar environment as Burris played quarterback for the Bears during the 2002 season.
“Things just quickly escalated while I was at training camp. A week before I was supposed to head back to Ottawa the head coach and the GM both stopped me, Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace,” Burris said.
“They said, ‘Hank, you ever thought about doing this? You would make a great head coach in this league one day.’ When they said that, it totally blew me away. I called my wife Nicole and she was like, ‘You better keep your butt down there.'”
Burris played 294 career games with Calgary, Saskatchewan, Hamilton, and Ottawa, winning three Grey Cups in five appearances. He threw for 63,639 yards over 18 seasons and remains the third-leading passer — and third-leading rusher among quarterbacks — in CFL history. In 2010 and 2015 man with the smile recognized across Canada earned the league’s Most Outstanding Player Award.
“Everybody wants to know what we did in Canada. People want to implement and be the first to do this, and the first to do that. But a lot of people look to Canada, as far as in the CFL, as far as the things that we did,” Burris said.
“You’re starting to see the transition taking place, I’m able to reach into the vault for some of the things that we did up here because it’s proven to be successful. That’s why you see teams like Kansas City and the Green Bay Packers, they run a lot of the CFL analogies.”
