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The Chicago Bears returned to the practice field Thursday with coach Matt Nagy joining them for the first time since before the Week 7 game at Tampa Bay.

Nagy missed eight days after testing positive for COVID-19 but returned to work Tuesday, with the Bears now in practice mode because of a shifted week for the Monday night road game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Here are three things we heard at Halas Hall as the week gets going.

1. Matt Nagy was holed up in a nearby hotel during his quarantine.

He watched the 33-22 loss to the San Francisco 49ers from there Sunday and took notes during the game. He tried to predict the play call based on the formation, down and distance and had a pretty good idea he had a hand in crafting the gameplan. Nagy was also in the offensive meetings.

“I didn’t eat and I didn’t drink (during the game),” he said. “Nothing. I just sat there and I was nervous the whole time. I didn’t think I was going to be nervous. But I was more nervous than normal. I had no idea how it was going to go. I was writing down play-by-play what happened. You remember a lot more stuff when you write it all down and you’re able to look at it in between timeouts and stuff but it was different, really, really weird.”

He remained connected with staff and players during Zoom calls but otherwise tried to use the time away to get a different perspective on the team, which has lost three consecutive games to fall to 3-5.

“You never want that to happen and you get frustrated,” Nagy said. “Man, you really can’t make it up. You’re a head coach of a team and you can’t be there with your team. That’s hard. How do you deal with that?

“The initial reaction for me was, ‘OK, how am I gonna going to handle this?’ But then when you get that time to be able to sit back and say, ‘OK, where am I?’ I talk about it with the staff and the players: What’s the 30,000-foot view right now? I get to step away from being inside in the trees, step up and go, ‘How’s this going? Where are things?’ And how do I as a leader be able to see where we’re at?”

If Nagy came away with any grand observations, he didn’t share them. But he stressed repeatedly that with where the season is, the only thing he can put his energy toward is the daily grind of preparing for a Steelers team that started 1-3 before rolling off three straight wins.

Nagy credited the Bears with having a positive vibe as they prepared for practice and said the energy in the building was upbeat.

“They were resilient throughout the week,” he said. “You understand the temperature of where they’re at. They were pissed at the way that we played and ended up losing that game.

“But then you’ve got to reset. Today they come in and it’s all Pittsburgh.”

2. Starting quarterback Justin Fields said he is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Given the spread of the virus within the Bears recently — five players plus Nagy have missed at least one game because of the league’s COVID-19 protocol — plus the drama swirling in Green Bay right now over Aaron Rodgers’ unvaccinated status and mandatory quarantine, Fields was asked directly Thursday whether he was fully vaccinated.

“Yeah,” he replied.

As long as Fields wasn’t bending the truth, that’s a promising revelation for those hoping his development through his rookie season won’t be impeded unnecessarily.

NFL regulations for 2021 require players who are unvaccinated to miss a minimum of 10 days if they test positive. That’s why Rodgers already was declared out for the Packers game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday after returning a positive test Wednesday. The reigning MVP also will miss the entire week of practice in Week 10 and won’t be eligible to be taken off the reserve/COVID-19 list until Nov. 13 at the earliest. That’s the day before the Packers play host to the Seattle Seahawks.

Unvaccinated players also might miss a minimum of five days if they are identified as high-risk close contacts of another individual who tested positive. That was the reason Bears offensive tackle Elijah Wilkinson was a late scratch the day of the game against the Buccaneers. Wilkinson and rookie linebacker Caleb Johnson were placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list that weekend after traveling with the team to Florida.

Edge rusher Robert Quinn, tight end Jimmy Graham and running back Damien Williams also missed a game while on the reserve/COVID-19 list. Williams is unvaccinated. Graham told reporters in early August he was vaccinated. Quinn’s status is unknown.

Vaccinated players, under league guidelines, will never be identified as high-risk close contacts. Vaccinated individuals can return to team activities after returning two consecutive negative tests separated by at least 24 hours.

3. Justin Fields agreed with the assessment of coaches that he was more decisive against the 49ers.

He completed 19 of 27 passes for 175 yards and a touchdown and became only the second quarterback in Bears history to rush for more than 100 yards, gaining 103 on 10 attempts.

What’s the difference been for the rookie?

“Just more time,” Fields said. “More games under my belt. More snaps. So the more and more snaps I get, just the more comfortable I get. It slows down a little bit.”

Fields has also been putting in extra time with wide receivers — meeting on their own — which has helped at least a little in terms of making sure the quarterback is seeing the same thing his targets are for a choppy passing game through eight games.

“Those meetings are for getting us on the same page and pretty much me relaying to them what I’m thinking during this play or how I want them to run a certain route at a certain depth,” he said. “That’s just going to make our connection better and our chemistry better.”

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