Justin Fields left the Chicago Bears two months ago with little controversy. GM Ryan Poles traded him to the Pittsburgh Steelers, thanking the young quarterback for all his hard work over the past three years. It was a sad but uneventful sendoff. Apparently, not everybody was satisfied with how things played out. Not long after Fields left, rumors began surfacing that Fields’ image of a tough competitor and locker room leader was carefully crafted for the media without much actual truth behind it.
Tyler Dunne of Go Long has several connections inside the NFL. He reached out to several of them for a piece he did on the Bears’ ugly quarterback history. The details he uncovered about Fields were shocking. There was his contentious relationship with Andy Dalton and Nick Foles, for one. Fields apparently didn’t like the idea of being mentored by them and felt he didn’t need their help. It didn’t end there. One person inside the locker room told Dunne that the quarterback was never the elite leader he was often portrayed as.
One source plugged into the Bears locker room says the widely held narrative that Fields was a strong leader is inflated, citing the quarterback as “a surface level dude” who didn’t develop authentic relationships with teammates. He called reports that teammates love Fields “bullshit,” adding that the quarterback carried himself with an undeserved aura and lacks emotional intelligence for someone who’s been a quarterback so long.
Another source said Fields lacked a “presence” in the building.
Justin Fields wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t what his fans thought he was.
Yes, guys like D.J. Moore and Jaylon Johnson spoke out on his behalf. That is what good teammates do. Fields had some in the locker room who loved him. That isn’t unusual. Jay Cutler had his fans, too. Yet it doesn’t feel like the quarterback was as universally beloved as many felt. So many people feared a locker room mutiny if the Bears decided to part ways with Fields. That never happened. In fact, there was hardly any outrage at all. A few heartfelt tweets, and that was it. Once Caleb Williams arrived, everybody seemed to move on real fast.
Plenty of people will call this a character assassination. Nameless sources are taking shots at Justin Fields when he isn’t around to defend himself. Maybe that is true. Or perhaps they couldn’t say anything when he was still on the team because it would’ve created a needless distraction. It is already hard enough winning without controversies. Don’t forget what happened in 2014 once it came out that offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer trashed Cutler to the press. The team imploded.
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This was the only way to set the record straight, at least in their eyes.
Players coming into the NFL are, by nature young. But what shapes the success of failure of every team, every organization and every business, is the culture and organizational vision of OLDER people: coaches, coordinators, general managers, position coaches. People who writers (like Erik Lambert) continually ignore.
The depth of writing, comes from knowing WHO to listen to, and who to WATCH. Watch players, listen to coaches.
When this writer listens to other writers, podcasters, “insiders,” and “former” (meaning FIRED) ex-general managers or coaches. You get click-bait, but lack of substance.
Sewing circle junk. Reality TV is more believable than this story. For someone that wanted Fields gone so badly, Lambert sure seems to be swinging from his…well, you know. He should write for “One Life to Live” or whatever soap opera he likes best.
@mbearest also, the song “Get over it”…good example…with dirty laundry
@timgjerde56 Boom, Well said sir. Short story, stop evaluating these rumors folks. I have absolutely Zero doubt that they are all bullshit. The National Inquirer has to be suffering from what the media has become over the last decade or so. It’s literally scary to think about. In this case, MAYBE somebody kinda connected to the team stated that Justin was a good guy, hard worker blah blah blah but a few people think his image was exaggerated… And SHIT sells so lets roll with it. The media doesn’t care about the truth, they care about what sells. Integrity is… Read more »
I could easily ping a half-dozen or more of the posts here for representing what I’ve always made an issue about posts in the comments and the articles themselves. Life isn’t fair, but that refers to chaos theory in a sense. Random things(good and bad) happen to people and it’s the way of things. But here, we and the authors are responsible for our comments and the veracity of the material in the articles. Stepping out for a fun-loving stroll down what I call “sarcasm lane” is fine. Sometimes, the topic or just the article itself lends itself to those… Read more »