Watching the Super Bowl unfold was a great lesson for the Chicago Bears. For months, the team and its fans have wrestled with a singular question: what to do at quarterback. Do they keep Justin Fields, attempting to build further around him in hopes he can blossom into a star? Or do they cut their losses and use the #1 overall pick on whichever quarterback they think has the brightest NFL future? People are divided almost right down the middle on this subject. After watching the Super Bowl, anybody with common sense should have reached a conclusion.
The Bears have to draft a quarterback.
A cold reality will have set in. San Francisco had a terrific roster with Hall of Fame-caliber players at several positions. However, Kansas City had the ace. They had the better quarterback. Patrick Mahomes once again made the key plays in the big moments to lift his team to a third championship. For an idea of how critical having a top-five quarterback is in this league, take a look at every Super Bowl winner since 2010.
- 2023 – Patrick Mahomes
- 2022 – Patrick Mahomes
- 2021 – Matthew Stafford
- 2020 – Tom Brady
- 2019 – Patrick Mahomes
- 2018 – Tom Brady
- 2017 – Nick Foles
- 2016 – Tom Brady
- 2015 – Peyton Manning
- 2014 – Tom Brady
- 2013 – Russell Wilson
- 2012 – Joe Flacco
- 2011 – Eli Manning
- 2010 – Aaron Rodgers
You can safely argue that a future Hall of Famer won all but two of those games. The days of building great rosters and having them carry a decent QB to a title are over.
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The Chicago Bears can’t know what the future holds.
There is no telling if Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, or somebody else in this draft class will ever reach that tier of excellence. However, one thing they can safely say is Fields won’t get there. He’s a world-class athlete, a hard worker, and great leader. Sadly, he lacks the necessary precision to become a true assassin in the passing game. The same problem bedeviled guys like Lamar Jackson and Michael Vick. It’s why they always made the playoffs but never reached a Super Bowl. They always ran into somebody who could make the toughest throws in critical moments.
Fields has routinely shown he can’t do that. GM Ryan Poles seems to have reached the same conclusion. That is why he set the price tag to trade the #1 pick so high. He intends to take a quarterback. Every championship team in this league needs a nuclear option. The Chicago Bears haven’t had one since the World War II era. They’ve tried many times to find it again. One of their biggest issues during that long drought was an unwillingness to admit what they had wasn’t good enough.
Poles isn’t going to make that mistake.
I honestly think the game showed you have to build around the qb with extra draft capital. The 49ers outplayed the chiefs most of the game but blew it when they stopped running the ball in the 3rd quarter
If Fields was in this draft class he’d be a top 2 prospect at qb.
Poles has enough potential draft capital in #1 to solidify the OL for a decade with some trading and that’s what he’s going to do. Trading Fields for a 2nd rd pick and taking a qb amounts to trading #1 for a 2nd rd pick.
A reset a qb would be a money decision more than a team building decision.
Yeah, I’ll stick with copying and pasting the insiders who never actually watch a Bears game.
@jmscooby You kind of sound like you just copied and pasted one of Erik’s “insiders” who never actually watched a Bears game. Target distribution in 2023 was more spread out than you seem to think. Most true WR1’s around the league see 30+% of their teams’s targets. Moore was right around 27%. Mooney had almost 12% of targets which is totally in line with other teams’ 3rd or 4th target. That doesn’t mean he was the 3rd orc4th read on most plays, as he was the first read on his share of them. The problem was what he did with… Read more »
Fields is a one read QB. When DJ was brought in, all that work Mooney put in with JF in the off-season became a waste of time. If we drafted MHJ this year, I’m assuming DJ would become the neglected WR. JF can’t scan the field, or progress through his reads to find the open guy. A lot of that is due to his poor pocket presence. He’s too quick to feel pressure, and looks to escape instead of stepping up into the pocket. I don’t know if size is an issue, but Poles seems to prefer larger receivers that… Read more »