Justin Fields knows there’s a typical timeline in the NFL. The Chicago Bears QB thinks he’s ‘just at the start.’
Two years, eight months and one day ago, Chicagoan Carlos Nelson walked across the NFL draft stage, shook Commissioner Roger Goodell’s hand, removed his mask and announced the pick.
With the 11th selection, the Chicago Bears were taking Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields.
Masked-up Bears fans at the first in-person draft after the emergence of COVID-19 cheered, and NFL Network analysts heaped praise.
“This is an exciting moment here for the Chicago Bears,” analyst Daniel Jeremiah said. “This is a team that has a pretty good defense in place. They just didn’t have any juice. There was no excitement on this offense. … He’s going to give this Chicago Bears team something they don’t have, and it’s going to be a lot more fun to watch.”
Charles Davis cued up the comparison: Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. Davis cited the body and arm, the ability to move around and extend plays, the adaptability and toughness.
After decades of searching for a franchise quarterback, the Bears might have found the player to break through the mediocrity.
Fast-forward through a challenging rookie season under a lame-duck coaching staff. Through a general manager and coaching change. Through more growing pains in a second season with a stripped-down roster. Through the second-best rushing season by a quarterback in NFL history with 1,143 yards. Through 6,258 passing yards and 39 touchdown passes over 36 starts but also 30 interceptions, 127 sacks and an 81.4 passer rating. Through a social media movement anointing H1M. Through a dislocated right thumb throwing off incremental progress in Year 3. Through endless outside debate about whether the Bears offensive struggles are the fault of the coaches or the quarterback.
And we get to Friday afternoon at Halas Hall, two days before what potentially could be Fields’ final start at Soldier Field for the Bears.
At his locker after practice, Fields considered how all of that had been jammed into the start of his career, which now hinges on a crucial Bears decision. And he summed it up with a familiar conclusion, one he has offered before in a wild season: “God doesn’t make mistakes.”
“It’s been tough,” he said. “My situation has been different than others. But I wouldn’t change it if I had the option to. I’ve learned a lot. I learned a lot of football. … And I learned a lot of life stuff too. My journey has definitely been different, but I’m on this journey for a reason.”
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Entering the Week 17 game against the Atlanta Falcons, Fields and the Bears have won three of their last four games to double their three-win total from 2022 under coach Matt Eberflus.
By most accounts, Fields has made steps toward becoming the type of quarterback the Bears can win with. Interceptions and sacks are down since he came back from the thumb injury Nov. 19. He has closed out some wins. He has had flashes of improvement in his movement within the pocket and his willingness to pass downfield rather than always tuck and run when the pocket breaks down. And he has continued to show his unique ability — unlike few others in the NFL — to extend plays with his legs.
But is that enough to convince the Bears to bet on him again?
General manager Ryan Poles is a bad Carolina Panthers finish away from securing the No. 1 draft pick he obtained in the trade of last year’s No. 1 pick. A highly touted quarterback draft class, led by USC’s Caleb Williams and North Carolina’s Drake Maye, awaits this spring. And questions remain about whether Fields — who ranks 23rd with 195.1 passing yards per game this season — can become the quarterback to lead the Bears toward their Super Bowl hopes.
All of those factors lead to more questions as the Bears head toward their final home game of the season Sunday and then their finale against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.
Could this really be it for Fields with the Bears? Is Poles ready to switch gears toward the development of a new quarterback? Or will he give Fields more time?
Fields, who is just 24, truly believes he will become the quarterback he wants to be, whether it’s in Chicago or elsewhere.
“With my work ethic, with the tools that God has blessed me with, I’m going to get there one day,” Fields said. “That’s why I’m not necessarily worried about whether I’m here or somewhere else next year. God blessed me with amazing tools — a talented arm and legs that I can use to run away from guys. And I’m smart, too, learn from my mistakes. With the way I work, with the way I love this game, I’m going to get there one day.
“And I haven’t even touched it. People put a timeline on whether they can judge guys, but I’m really just at the start.”
But that’s the way quarterback opportunities in the NFL often go — in a blink.
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For the record, Fields hopes he stays in Chicago, listing as his first reason his relationships with teammates.
“It’s a blessing being here,” he said. “Chicago is a great football city. So if I got to choose, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”
The choice, of course, is very often not up to the player.
About three years ago, Chicago was asking the same questions about a different quarterback, though Mitch Trubisky’s exit was more prolonged.
By the end of Trubisky’s third season in 2019, Bears GM Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy were clearly unhappy with his play but didn’t have the same draft resources the team does now, having traded away their 2020 first-round pick for Khalil Mack. So they traded a fourth-round pick for Nick Foles and made Trubisky compete with Foles. That set up an odd 8-8 playoff season in 2020 that convinced Chairman George McCaskey and President Ted Phillips to give Pace and Nagy another year — and the opportunity to draft another quarterback: Fields. (More on that later.)
Wide receiver Darnell Mooney remembers watching that mess unfold with Trubisky, Foles and players such as wide receiver Allen Robinson, whose production rapidly deteriorated in 2021.
“It was crazy to see,” Mooney said. “I’m looking at A-Rob’s situation. I’m looking at Mitch and Nick’s situation, and I’m like, ‘Damn.’ … Eventually you’ll be in it, and you just have to figure out a way how to handle it.
“(Justin) has handled it well. He’s not looking at it as if, ‘I’m not going to be here.’ He’s looking at it like, ‘I’m here, and this is my team.’ ”
First-round quarterbacks are often quickly in such situations. But if Fields is given only three seasons with the Bears, it would be fast even by the NFL’s “Not For Long” track record.
Take a look at the 32 quarterbacks drafted in the first round from 2011, when the new collective bargaining agreement initiated a fifth-year option for first-rounders, to 2020, the most recent group to have its options picked up or declined.
Only seven of them didn’t make it past Year 3 with the teams that drafted them: Dwayne Haskins, Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Paxton Lynch, Johnny Manziel, Brandon Weeden and Blaine Gabbert. That list is at eight if 2021 No. 3 pick Trey Lance, who was traded after Year 2, is included. Of those quarterbacks, only Darnold and Gabbert went on to start more than five more games in their careers thus far.
Of the remaining 25 first-round quarterbacks, including Trubisky, several were already on their way out as starters after three seasons, with seven more leaving the teams that drafted them after Year 4.
Many of the teams that kept their first-round picks around weren’t staring down the possibility of owning the No. 1 pick for the second straight year with a crop of highly touted quarterbacks available in the draft, like the Bears are. Darnold and Rosen were among the casualties of teams with high first-round picks, which netted the Jets Zach Wilson and the Cardinals Kyler Murray.
Bears tight end Marcedes Lewis, an 18-year NFL veteran, spent the first 12 years of his career with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who cycled through quarterback after quarterback, including Byron Leftwich, David Garrard, Gabbert and Blake Bortles, to name a few. He learned quickly about how “economics” played into the cycle. Because of the league’s contract structures, a team hopes to figure out whether to pay a quarterback after three or four seasons, and many times it’s cheaper or easier or more beneficial to the regime — or of course smarter — to move on.
Speaking generally, Lewis said he thought three years of being a starter was enough time to figure out what a player at any position is going to be.
“They’re not expecting you to be All-Pro after three years, but I think that’s enough time to figure out who you are as a player, on and off the field, the value you bring,” Lewis said. “If you’re one of those guys (who plays right away) and you’re playing for three years, you have enough time on task, you have enough tape out there to figure out, ‘OK, when I turn on the film, I know what I’m getting out of this person. He’s not up and down. I know who this guy is going to be five, six years down the line.’ ”
But being in the position he’s in now, Fields wondered about some of the quarterbacks that didn’t make it with their teams, noting how Aaron Rodgers sat behind Brett Favre for three years before his rise to one of the best in the NFL.
“I get it, the whole try to put a timeline on guys, three to four years. But everybody is different. Everybody matures differently,” Fields said. “That’s just the world we live in. Everyone wants to see stuff happen so quickly. But honestly, I feel like some guys in the past, maybe if they weren’t given up on so fast by the organization or the fan base or their teammates, they would have grown into a better player.
“It’s just a tough position because they might have let those thoughts seep in, of, ‘Maybe I’m not good enough.’ But the thing about me, I’m not going to let that sink in. Because at the end of the day, I know how talented I am. I know God has blessed me with gifts that not many people have, so I’m going to just keep using those gifts to get the most out of them.”
