Bear Digest

Justin Fields Came Up Short of the Mark

Analysis: Despite high hopes and the cost of moving up to get Justin Fields on draft day, the bottom line was he didn't get it done.

Gene Chamberlain

Justin Fields Came Up Short of the Mark
Justin Fields Came Up Short of the Mark /
In this story:

There is irony layered upon irony to the level of injustice in the sad case of Justin Fields.

The Bears kept him around for three years and expected him to deliver through two coaching regimes, two different offensive coordinators and two general managers.

Through it all they staged a total rebuild of the franchise by gutting the salary cap and dumping almost every veteran player of value.

The wide receiver corps was suspect at times. Byron Pringle? N'Keal Harry? Velus Jones Jr.  Come on.

That's all pretty tough.

And when they finally got him Keenan Allen to team with DJ Moore and Cole Kmet, along with running back D'Andre Swift and tight end Gerald Everett, they sent Fields packing for the equivalent of a pair of football cleats.

Fields' spectacular running and occasionally brilliant passes always teased, but the end result was usually disappointment. 

The Bears were no longer willing to take losses and chalk it up to learning after three seasons with the fifth-year option looming on his contract.

A Sixth-Round Pick Is Insulting

The contract situation is one major point why the Bears are willing to go forward. It's part of the reason why they were able to gain so little back in return for Saturday's trade to Pittsburgh—a conditional sixth-round pick in 2025. 

Waivers almost would have been less insulting for Fields.

At least now he can leave life "in the gray," as GM Ryan Poles had described it, and join the black and yellow.

It is with Poles where some of this embarrassment rests. It's not necessarily for supplying Fields with an insufficient supporting cast. The embarrrassment is the return on investment.

What the price would have been in return for Fields if they simply had traded him sometime near the combine is unknown, but it's difficult to believe it would have been anything close to what they eventually received. 

No less of an "expert" on talent than Mel Kiper Jr. suggested the Bears could get a first-round draft pick for Fields back well before the combine.

A major reason their return on investment was so low in the end was lack of teams willing to take him at that point. The market was gone. By then, all of the musical chairs in the quarterback shuffle had filled.

The real problem in this direction started when Poles announced he wanted to "do right by" Fields and didn't want him to "live in the gray."

This was a sure tip to other teams that the Bears planned to use the first pick for Caleb Williams and Fields would be expendable. It was telling them that the Bears didn't value him much. So if the Bears didn't value him, why should they? So Poles probably contributed to the low return himself.

And by the way, what ever happened to waiting for the medical reports on Williams?

Apparently they were getting rid of Fields no matter what.

Effort Alone Didn't Get It Done

That's only part of this sad situation, however. It's only a small part.

As GM and opposing coaches studied film heading toward the combine, they no doubt came to the same conclusions about Fields that the Bears and coach Matt Eberflus had. 

It's not difficult to see how Fields was hesitant at times, rarely threw intermediate middle routes with success, used his legs far too often and without seeing all or most of his possible options.

Lamar Jackson runs a lot, too, but he also throws touchdown passes and few interceptions. He has a career passer rating of 98.0, averages 7.5 yards per attempt and 64.5% completions. He passes it accurately enough to win and has even won in the playoffs. 

Eight game-winning drives and 10 fourth-quarter comebacks says he knows the bottom line in the NFL. It's to win football games. 

Plenty of fantasy people and stat mongers like to say wins aren't a quarterback stat.

They are actually the only quarterback stat that really counts. It's why Jim McMahon was such an effective Bears quarterback. 

Fields was an exciting player but didn't do what it took to net wins in the fourth quarter.  Last season his passer rating in fourth quarters was 53.4. He ranked 41st in a league with 32 teams and 32 starting quarterbacks. You can't blame that all on the offensive coordinator, the other receivers, the running backs or the blockers. He had DJ Moore, for goodness sake.

Matthew Stafford spent most of his career in no less of a football hole than the city of Detroit. This was pre-knee biting Dan Campbell. They were horrible but Stafford has 38 fourth-quarter comebacks and 34 game-winning drives and he was usually surrounded by inept play. 

In the NFL, little separates the haves from the have-nots and being clutch in the fourth quarter can be exactly what does.

It's easy to blame the faltering pieces on every side but in 2022 Fields and the Bears lost seven straight times in games decided by a touchdown and conversion or less. Those were games waiting to be won and he didn't get it done.

When you get to the end of a game like that, a lucky break here or there can give a team even with lesser talent surrounding its quarterback the chance to win. And he had those magnificent legs to rely on if he couldn't do it with his arm. 

Still, they lost all seven of those.

Two more games got tacked on to that run in 2023 to make it nine straight, a streak that started after they beat Houston 23-20 in 2022. 

When the streak of consecutive tight games lost finally ended, it wasn't even Fields starting and finishing it. Tyson Bagent beat the Panthers 16-13.

He Wasn't Ryan Poles' Guy

No doubt, in the end the losses made it easier for Poles to come to his decision, but it's also true it was easier for Poles to give up on Fields than it would have been for Ryan Pace. 

The former Bears GM swapped the team's 20th pick in 2021 for the Giants' 11th pick, then also gave up the 164th pick in 2021, as well as the Bears' first-round pick in 2022 and fourth-round pick in 2022 to be able to draft Fields.

Poles had no such ties to Fields, only the belief that hard work can eventually pay off. And there was never a doubt about Fields' willingness to work.

In the NFL, though, it takes more.

Even through all the personnel change and lack of talent, the coaching issues, and everything else, the Bears were in position to win games and Fields didn't get it done.

Bears fans who fell in love with a losing quarterback will find it difficult to admit, but their guy never accomplished what the team brought him to Chicago to do and he didn't get close enough to it to convince decision makers he would eventually get there before he was costing them $40 million or more a year.

You don't give up a first-round draft pick, one who cost your team extra first- and second-round picks and a fourth-rounder just to acquire, and get a sixth-round conditional pick back in exchange and then say you are sure he was close to being the answer but just needed more time. 

He wasn't close. Leave it at that.

The hope now must be Caleb Williams, or whoever they pick first, actually can be the dream player for a franchise that still is the only one without a 4,000-yard passer in NFL history.

Not many Bears and certainly no quarterbacks played with the heart Fields showed in three years. If Jay Cutler had 10% of what Fields showed in this regard, the Bears would have at least one  more Lombardi Trophy.

It takes more than this in the NFL for a quarterback, though, and maybe in Pittsburgh Fields will find it.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

Published
Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

Home/News