Sometimes in life, one can find themself in an unwinnable position, where no matter what they do, they're doomed to fail. Where even if you give your best effort at everything within your control, it wouldn’t be enough. Like if you find yourself in a chess match with Garry Kasparov, or in a swimming race with Michael Phelps. Or if you’ve been drafted to play quarterback for an NFL team with a terrible coaching staff, one of the worst offensive lines in the league, and the worst receiving corps in football.
I can’t claim to know of Justin Fields’ abilities in either chess or the 100-meter butterfly, but he did find himself in the latter of those unwinnable positions with the Chicago Bears. With a gravely depleted offensive line and receiving group alongside a coaching staff unable (or unwilling?) to create an offense tailored to his strengths, many began to write Fields off after just a season-and-change in professional football. As he’s begun to prove over the past few weeks of sensational quarterback play, however, he’s not quite done in this league yet. In fact, he may finally just be getting started.
Justin Fields had a career day against the Dolphins on Sunday. Image from: NBC Sports.
Fields started off the 2022 season slowly, throwing just two touchdowns against four interceptions through four starts, and real conversations about his long-term viability as quarterback for the Bears started to take place. Though largely unfair, Fields at the nadir of his career suddenly had everything to prove, to both the Bears organization and to professional football as a whole.
After a career-best game against Miami this past Sunday, the script is finally starting to flip. We’re beginning to see Justin Fields -- the real Justin Fields -- for who he is, which is a hyper-athletic quarterback with the build, cannon arm, and throwing savvy to elevate a modern offense into the stratosphere.
Last year, Fields endured a rather miserable rookie season in Chicago. Under head coach Matt Nagy, the young quarterback never quite found his footing in a woeful Bears offense. Pro Football Focus ranked their offensive line 22nd in the league, and their receiving corps left much to be desired outside of the onetime Pro-Bowler Allen Robinson, who, in truth, hasn’t looked like an elite player in quite some time. The Bears finished fourth-worst in overall offensive EPA/Play and in dropback EPA/play in 2021, per RBSDM, and Fields ranked 36th among all qualified quarterbacks in EPA+CPOE composite (there are 32 teams in the league, if you’ll remember).
Fields went 2-8 in his ten starts in 2021, including a seven-game losing streak to end his season, and while it is easy (and mostly correct) to blame this on his almost-laughable lack of support, there were instances where even I, a longtime Fields truther, started to worry if I misevaluated him all along. Accuracy issues showed up on tape and in the stat sheet -- he finished 2021 with a 59.8 completion percentage and a 7:10 TD:INT ratio -- but most notably the simple eye test showed a true lack of confidence. Often, it felt that he just wasn’t trusting what he was seeing on the field, which has in the past been a death knell for young quarterbacks in difficult situations.
Those trust issues and a frustrating desire to hold on to the football for far too long tanked his 2021 season beyond all recognition and bled into the start of Fields’ sophomore season. Take this play from Week 3 against the Texans, for instance-- you can actually see him go through his progressions on this play (though an oft-repeated and unfair criticism of him coming out of college was that this was something he was incapable of doing), but he just doesn’t trust what he’s seeing off of the play-action, and instead decides to hold the ball for a sack:
As another example from the same game, Fields has running back Khalil Herbert wide open on a short curl route at the bottom of the screen after spreading him out on the pre-snap motion; it’s an easy completion on 2nd and 10, and Fields even appears to look right at him, but again panics and pulls the ball down, trying to scramble before getting tripped up for a sack:
There are actually plenty of instances from last season and the start of this season where Fields goes through his progressions with aplomb, but just takes a sack, goes for an ill-advised scramble, or throws it away. The football IQ was always there, but he was playing scared. As a result, Fields was again one of the worst quarterbacks in football through the first four weeks of this season; only Baker Mayfield posted a poorer EPA+CPOE composite, and those two formed a quite dreadful class of their own in RBSDM’s Quarterback Efficiency graph:
After the Bears’ Week 4 loss to the Giants, though, something seemed to start to click for Fields and his offense. There wasn’t a night-and-day turnaround or a singular moment where you could see a new-and-improved Justin Fields, but rather a slow and steady improvement across the board in his play, culminating in his incredible performance on Sunday. It would appear new head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy -- two hires I was admittedly critical of before the season -- are giving Fields the coaching and direction he needs even despite a still-glaring lack of talent surrounding him.
PFF ranked Chicago’s offensive line the second-worst unit coming into this season and panned their receiving corps as dead-last among all teams. Led by a head coach with a background in defense and a first-time offensive coordinator in the NFL, this is an offense that, no matter the signal-caller, would be delighted to even look passable. And yet, over the past five weeks the Chicago Bears’ offense has begun to look passable indeed-- and may even be good!
Even including a Thursday-night hiccup against Washington, Chicago has seen real improvement over their past five games:
Across these past five weeks, Fields ranks 10th in RBSDM’s EPA+CPOE composite and 8th in pure EPA/play. He’s doing this while still keeping his eyes downfield, as his average depth of target beyond the line of scrimmage ranks 7th-highest in this same span. The midseason acquisition of Chase Claypool has perhaps begun to help open up the field a little more for Fields due to Claypool's speed and size, but the personnel is largely the same as it was to begin the season, meaning it is not very good. And yet, Fields is starting to put up A-tier EPA/play numbers, and this is in large part due to him getting some much-needed swagger back in his system.
Fields’ arm is electric, and he knows that better than anyone. His downright stupid athleticism and baseball background have molded a quarterback who can contort his arm into circus-freak positions and still zip the ball everywhere across the gridiron. That can result in plays like this, this, or really any of these.
At his best, he’s a true X’s-and-O’s mismatch in the game of football. He’s got the elusiveness to evade blitzes and take advantage of the natural open space they create, the poise and build to step up in the pocket and launch a cannonball downfield like a souped-up traditional pocket passer, and poses an existential threat to defenses on any given scramble play, read option, or straight-up designed QB run due to his aforementioned wicked athleticism.
I mean, come on. What do you even do against this?
I can’t claim to know of Justin Fields’ abilities in either chess or the 100-meter butterfly, but he did find himself in the latter of those unwinnable positions with the Chicago Bears. With a gravely depleted offensive line and receiving group alongside a coaching staff unable (or unwilling?) to create an offense tailored to his strengths, many began to write Fields off after just a season-and-change in professional football. As he’s begun to prove over the past few weeks of sensational quarterback play, however, he’s not quite done in this league yet. In fact, he may finally just be getting started.
Justin Fields had a career day against the Dolphins on Sunday. Image from: NBC Sports.
Fields started off the 2022 season slowly, throwing just two touchdowns against four interceptions through four starts, and real conversations about his long-term viability as quarterback for the Bears started to take place. Though largely unfair, Fields at the nadir of his career suddenly had everything to prove, to both the Bears organization and to professional football as a whole.
After a career-best game against Miami this past Sunday, the script is finally starting to flip. We’re beginning to see Justin Fields -- the real Justin Fields -- for who he is, which is a hyper-athletic quarterback with the build, cannon arm, and throwing savvy to elevate a modern offense into the stratosphere.
Last year, Fields endured a rather miserable rookie season in Chicago. Under head coach Matt Nagy, the young quarterback never quite found his footing in a woeful Bears offense. Pro Football Focus ranked their offensive line 22nd in the league, and their receiving corps left much to be desired outside of the onetime Pro-Bowler Allen Robinson, who, in truth, hasn’t looked like an elite player in quite some time. The Bears finished fourth-worst in overall offensive EPA/Play and in dropback EPA/play in 2021, per RBSDM, and Fields ranked 36th among all qualified quarterbacks in EPA+CPOE composite (there are 32 teams in the league, if you’ll remember).
Fields went 2-8 in his ten starts in 2021, including a seven-game losing streak to end his season, and while it is easy (and mostly correct) to blame this on his almost-laughable lack of support, there were instances where even I, a longtime Fields truther, started to worry if I misevaluated him all along. Accuracy issues showed up on tape and in the stat sheet -- he finished 2021 with a 59.8 completion percentage and a 7:10 TD:INT ratio -- but most notably the simple eye test showed a true lack of confidence. Often, it felt that he just wasn’t trusting what he was seeing on the field, which has in the past been a death knell for young quarterbacks in difficult situations.
Those trust issues and a frustrating desire to hold on to the football for far too long tanked his 2021 season beyond all recognition and bled into the start of Fields’ sophomore season. Take this play from Week 3 against the Texans, for instance-- you can actually see him go through his progressions on this play (though an oft-repeated and unfair criticism of him coming out of college was that this was something he was incapable of doing), but he just doesn’t trust what he’s seeing off of the play-action, and instead decides to hold the ball for a sack:
As another example from the same game, Fields has running back Khalil Herbert wide open on a short curl route at the bottom of the screen after spreading him out on the pre-snap motion; it’s an easy completion on 2nd and 10, and Fields even appears to look right at him, but again panics and pulls the ball down, trying to scramble before getting tripped up for a sack:
There are actually plenty of instances from last season and the start of this season where Fields goes through his progressions with aplomb, but just takes a sack, goes for an ill-advised scramble, or throws it away. The football IQ was always there, but he was playing scared. As a result, Fields was again one of the worst quarterbacks in football through the first four weeks of this season; only Baker Mayfield posted a poorer EPA+CPOE composite, and those two formed a quite dreadful class of their own in RBSDM’s Quarterback Efficiency graph:
After the Bears’ Week 4 loss to the Giants, though, something seemed to start to click for Fields and his offense. There wasn’t a night-and-day turnaround or a singular moment where you could see a new-and-improved Justin Fields, but rather a slow and steady improvement across the board in his play, culminating in his incredible performance on Sunday. It would appear new head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy -- two hires I was admittedly critical of before the season -- are giving Fields the coaching and direction he needs even despite a still-glaring lack of talent surrounding him.
PFF ranked Chicago’s offensive line the second-worst unit coming into this season and panned their receiving corps as dead-last among all teams. Led by a head coach with a background in defense and a first-time offensive coordinator in the NFL, this is an offense that, no matter the signal-caller, would be delighted to even look passable. And yet, over the past five weeks the Chicago Bears’ offense has begun to look passable indeed-- and may even be good!
Even including a Thursday-night hiccup against Washington, Chicago has seen real improvement over their past five games:
Over their past three contests, the Bears have put up point totals of 33, 29, and 32, without the aid of any defensive or special teams points. Justin Fields, judging by what shows up on tape, has shown consistent, steady improvement in each game. Grading him on statistics also helps, though, as he’s dug himself from the abyss of the dreaded bottom-left of RBSDM’s QB Efficiency chart to a much more favorable position:
Across these past five weeks, Fields ranks 10th in RBSDM’s EPA+CPOE composite and 8th in pure EPA/play. He’s doing this while still keeping his eyes downfield, as his average depth of target beyond the line of scrimmage ranks 7th-highest in this same span. The midseason acquisition of Chase Claypool has perhaps begun to help open up the field a little more for Fields due to Claypool's speed and size, but the personnel is largely the same as it was to begin the season, meaning it is not very good. And yet, Fields is starting to put up A-tier EPA/play numbers, and this is in large part due to him getting some much-needed swagger back in his system.
Fields’ arm is electric, and he knows that better than anyone. His downright stupid athleticism and baseball background have molded a quarterback who can contort his arm into circus-freak positions and still zip the ball everywhere across the gridiron. That can result in plays like this, this, or really any of these.
At his best, he’s a true X’s-and-O’s mismatch in the game of football. He’s got the elusiveness to evade blitzes and take advantage of the natural open space they create, the poise and build to step up in the pocket and launch a cannonball downfield like a souped-up traditional pocket passer, and poses an existential threat to defenses on any given scramble play, read option, or straight-up designed QB run due to his aforementioned wicked athleticism.
I mean, come on. What do you even do against this?
Fields has flipped his hips to the left and delivered a Mahomes-ian pass with success on numerous occasions in the NFL, and defenses know that. The problem is, Fields himself knows that defenses know that, and he takes advantage of that perfectly in that glorious fakeout in the above play. It’s a play that shouldn’t even have been possible for the vast majority of quarterbacks in the league, and yet I find myself questioning how the Dolphins could have even defended it at all in that situation.
Against Miami, Fields threw three touchdowns and no picks, posted a 106.7 passer rating, and took just two sacks for a net loss of seven yards en route to a scintillating 32-point performance. The story of the game, however, was the dominance of Fields on the ground; he carried the ball a season-high 15 times for 178 yards and a touchdown, breaking Michael Vick’s record for the most rushing yards by a QB in a regular-season game. At long last, the Bears are finally allowing Fields to shine as a runner, mixing in more designed runs and option plays; after averaging 8.4 rushing attempts in Weeks 1-5, Fields is averaging just over 12 carries per game in his last four outings.
It’s unclear why Chicago under Nagy and at the start of this season didn’t utilize Fields’ legs more, because option plays like this silky-smooth one against Miami are objectively the biggest advantage that the Bears have over opposing defenses. Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to finally see Fields in a more smartly-coached offense, and this will inevitably open up the field further for more layups in the future.
Even if he didn’t have a howitzer for a right arm, Chicago could still construct a decent offense around Fields’ legs with only designed runs, options, and dink-and-dunk RPOs. Just imagine what they can do if they can finally start taking advantage of that arm strength of his. At times it seemed like it could never be possible, but things are finally looking up for Fields and the Bears’ offense-- and their room to grow after this season is absurd.
Chicago’s new general manager Ryan Poles made it clear before this season that he would be tearing down the team to prepare for a full-scale rebuild. On paper, his moves made sense; there was a lot of fat to be trimmed in the form of aging players and bad contracts from the previous mess of Ryan Pace’s regime. Still, the stripping-down of the offensive personnel to the bare minimum around Justin Fields threatened to undermine his confidence, or even get him injured, which would derail Fields’ career and the rebuild as a whole.
With the way he’s played and steadily improved recently, though, it appears Fields will in fact emerge intact -- both physically and spiritually -- which sets up the Bears for some major improvements starting next season. Chicago already employs the third-youngest team in the league by average age, and they lead the league in projected cap space for this upcoming offseason by a considerable margin.
And I mean considerable:
2023 offseason cap space projections per Spotrac show the Bears in front by almost $50,000,000.
The Bears realistically can outbid any team for any player they want, although a more methodical approach to spread out that cap space to fill the very many holes in their roster would be a wiser approach. This is especially considering that the current wide receiver market this summer looks pretty slim:
Projected free agent WRs in 2023, per Spotrac.
The Bears will also have a good collection of draft picks to use to build their roster after trading away Robert Quinn and Roquan Smith to the Eagles and Ravens, respectively. They also still have control over their own first-round draft selection, which sits at ninth overall at the time of writing. Perhaps if the Bears can continue their strategy over the past five weeks of playing mostly really well on offense but still losing the game in the end, they’ll have a promising structure to build on with a high draft position, though all of that is much easier said than done, and serial losing has unseen repercussions on the culture of a team. Still, finishing with a draft pick high enough to be able to pair Fields with an elite WR prospect like Jordan Addison, for instance, could make for some extremely entertaining football.
Justin Fields is finally beginning to showcase his elite potential, and is playing with a fire that until now was unseen in his professional career. He’s sunk as low as a young quarterback can go, and still he’s emerged a player confident in his eyes, arm, and legs-- a thought that should be scary for defenses both in the present and in the future. If Chicago can make full use of their assets this upcoming offseason, they have a real chance to make a big leap into playoff contention next year in a weak NFC. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what this version of Fields does with a support system that can actually match his talent. ■
Against Miami, Fields threw three touchdowns and no picks, posted a 106.7 passer rating, and took just two sacks for a net loss of seven yards en route to a scintillating 32-point performance. The story of the game, however, was the dominance of Fields on the ground; he carried the ball a season-high 15 times for 178 yards and a touchdown, breaking Michael Vick’s record for the most rushing yards by a QB in a regular-season game. At long last, the Bears are finally allowing Fields to shine as a runner, mixing in more designed runs and option plays; after averaging 8.4 rushing attempts in Weeks 1-5, Fields is averaging just over 12 carries per game in his last four outings.
It’s unclear why Chicago under Nagy and at the start of this season didn’t utilize Fields’ legs more, because option plays like this silky-smooth one against Miami are objectively the biggest advantage that the Bears have over opposing defenses. Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to finally see Fields in a more smartly-coached offense, and this will inevitably open up the field further for more layups in the future.
Even if he didn’t have a howitzer for a right arm, Chicago could still construct a decent offense around Fields’ legs with only designed runs, options, and dink-and-dunk RPOs. Just imagine what they can do if they can finally start taking advantage of that arm strength of his. At times it seemed like it could never be possible, but things are finally looking up for Fields and the Bears’ offense-- and their room to grow after this season is absurd.
Chicago’s new general manager Ryan Poles made it clear before this season that he would be tearing down the team to prepare for a full-scale rebuild. On paper, his moves made sense; there was a lot of fat to be trimmed in the form of aging players and bad contracts from the previous mess of Ryan Pace’s regime. Still, the stripping-down of the offensive personnel to the bare minimum around Justin Fields threatened to undermine his confidence, or even get him injured, which would derail Fields’ career and the rebuild as a whole.
With the way he’s played and steadily improved recently, though, it appears Fields will in fact emerge intact -- both physically and spiritually -- which sets up the Bears for some major improvements starting next season. Chicago already employs the third-youngest team in the league by average age, and they lead the league in projected cap space for this upcoming offseason by a considerable margin.
And I mean considerable:
2023 offseason cap space projections per Spotrac show the Bears in front by almost $50,000,000.
The Bears realistically can outbid any team for any player they want, although a more methodical approach to spread out that cap space to fill the very many holes in their roster would be a wiser approach. This is especially considering that the current wide receiver market this summer looks pretty slim:
Projected free agent WRs in 2023, per Spotrac.
The Bears will also have a good collection of draft picks to use to build their roster after trading away Robert Quinn and Roquan Smith to the Eagles and Ravens, respectively. They also still have control over their own first-round draft selection, which sits at ninth overall at the time of writing. Perhaps if the Bears can continue their strategy over the past five weeks of playing mostly really well on offense but still losing the game in the end, they’ll have a promising structure to build on with a high draft position, though all of that is much easier said than done, and serial losing has unseen repercussions on the culture of a team. Still, finishing with a draft pick high enough to be able to pair Fields with an elite WR prospect like Jordan Addison, for instance, could make for some extremely entertaining football.
Justin Fields is finally beginning to showcase his elite potential, and is playing with a fire that until now was unseen in his professional career. He’s sunk as low as a young quarterback can go, and still he’s emerged a player confident in his eyes, arm, and legs-- a thought that should be scary for defenses both in the present and in the future. If Chicago can make full use of their assets this upcoming offseason, they have a real chance to make a big leap into playoff contention next year in a weak NFC. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what this version of Fields does with a support system that can actually match his talent. ■
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