Justin Fields is like any other quarterback. He loves to have the game put on his shoulders. He wants to throw the ball around and make big plays. The work he’s putting in to make that a reality is evidence enough. One has to think the 23-year-old is frustrated after the first two weeks of the season. In games against San Francisco and Green Bay, Fields has 28 pass attempts combined. For context, Joe Flacco leads the NFL with 103 passing attempts. That is almost five times as many.
Some wonder if head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy are reluctant to let him throw. Maybe they don’t trust him enough to execute. It is clear that Fields sometimes struggles with pocket awareness and field vision. Or perhaps they don’t trust his protection and wide receivers to get open. That doesn’t seem likely since both held up reasonably well against Green Bay. It would be easy for Fields to feel frustrated about not being given more chances.
At his latest press conference, he clarified that that wasn’t the case. Only one thing matters to the Chicago Bears quarterback.
“Like I said about Darnell on Sunday, if he caught zero passes and we won the game, he wouldn’t have any problem, if I threw zero passes and we won the game, I wouldn’t have any problem. Our goal as a team, as an offense is to win games. Nobody’s looking at how many passes did I have, how many yards did I I have.”
Justin Fields is allergic to losing.
He never did that much in high school or college. His ultra-competitive mentality makes it to where he is almost visibly ill every time the Bears lose. He admitted the defeat in Green Bay was the toughest one he’s had to stomach in his young career. Losing the game was bad enough, but to play so poorly made it ten times worse. That is why he changed his routine this week, waking up even earlier to get an extra hour of work in.
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Losing hope in quarterbacks is a time-honored tradition for Bears fans. They’ve been burned so many times by this point that they expect failure. That is what Justin Fields is working against. He’s playing in a brand new offense three weeks into the regular season. He deserves more time to get things pointed in the right direction. There are 15 games left. It’s a reasonable assumption he will throw the ball a lot more by the time they’re over.
It will be fair to pass judgment on his progress when that moment comes. Not before.
I Believe my eyes! I’m hoping 💯 percent that Justin Fields is the QB I’ve been waiting for my whole adult life as a Bears fan! Whatever the Bears team deficiencies are doesn’t account for the QB play of Fields today! He made some terrible decisions with where to go with the ball in today’s game (throwing into triple coverage), and he made some horrible throws! “I’m still hopeful this isn’t who he is as a NFL quarterback”. I fully realise this is a team in rebuild mode, but Justin Fields even said, he “played like trash”. However, I can… Read more »
The Bears are not the competitors they want to be yet. After all they are in time of rebuilding. However, I think they have the potential to become competitors in the near future as they continue to add the players that will improve the.team. They have the best coaching staff they’ve had in a long time and as the players develop under their leadership they are going to return to greatness.
103 is almost 140. Math is a lost art.
His trajectory is similar to that of Josh Allen, especially now that we have a functional GM and HC. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Why is it that Fields is the problem here? He was 7 of 11, 64% completion……Let’s focus on the game plan and play calling – which comes from the coaching. I understand the problems with locating Mooney and Kmet, but if on the few passing plays that he was given, they were not open, then how is this Fields fault? Let’s let this kid play and develop as in Chicago we all know about good QB development……