Justin Fields Has All the Mo

After a strong week of practice against Miami and then a comeback 20-13 win over the Dolphins to start preseason, Justin Fields has convinced any doubters.

USA Today

Justin Fields' momentum only built Saturday in his preseason debut at Soldier Field.

It promises to really snowball once he gets rolling.

After getting his feet steadied a bit while the Bears fell behind 13-0 against the Miami Dolphins, Fields started moving outside and rallied the offense for a 20-13 victory.

He fired a 30-yard touchdown pass to wide-open Jesse James and ran in from 8 yards out himself.

"I definitely feel good outside of the pocket," Fields said. "I feel very comfortable but I mean, it just puts a lot of stress on the defense."

The 8-yard run was obviously a scramble outside the pocket. He completed a handful of tosses on the run and was moving around when he found James behind all defenders after the Dolphins blew the coverage.

Fields went 14 of 20 for 142 yards. He also ran for 33 yards on six attempts while playing only from the 12:11 mark of the second quarter through the first Bears possession of the fourth quarter.

The key to the comeback win offensively might have been the late drive before halftime that Fields engineered in less than a minute to get the Bears in position for a 53-yard Cairo Santos Field goal as time expired. It started a run of 20 straight points.

"I think it was very important to get points up on the board and kind of get momentum going our way," Fields said.

Coach Matt Nagy was making no public pronouncements about Fields taking over the starting spot, just that he needs to keep stacking good plays in practices and good plays in games. 

"It is preseason and we understand that there's variables involved and all that, but at the same time if you said 'is he doing what you want him to do?' Absolutely," Nagy said.

Another key play Fields produced was right after a holding penalty to start the third quarter. He threw a jump ball for 25 yards to Rodney Adams, who had four catches and 57 yards receiving on the day. 

"He's a natural," Adams said of Fields.

Certainly most of what he did was against backups, but it was good enough that the question was bound to come up after Fields' effort. And that was if there is anything he can do to persuade Nagy differently about starting him on opening day.

Andy Dalton is supposed to start and only had two series, two three-and-outs in the game while the Dolphins took the 13-0 lead.

Surprisingly, Nagy didn't shoot the idea down entirely.

"Keep stacking days like he had today and understanding that, again in this whole process and this plan as we go, what's the ultimate goal for us as an offense? Scoring touchdowns, right?," Nagy said. "So keep leading the team down, keep getting first downs, keep getting touchdowns. 

"Let us be able to see the whys behind everything, right. Why did that happen. And the more times that you have things happen because of that player, meaning Justin or that player because of Andy or that player because of (David) Montgomery or whoever, we know that and we see that, it makes it hard on us and we are going to do whatever is best in the end—ultimately in the end we are always going

to do what's best for the Chicago Bears, right?"

It was about as close as anyone will get to getting Nagy to admit he'd put Fields out there. For now it will suffice, with Mitchell Trubisky and the Buffalo Bills coming to Chicago for preseason Game 2 next week, and Dalton getting a great deal of the work in that game.

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