The story of how Justin Fields couldn’t overcome the obstacles the Chicago Bears hurdled in front of him
The Justin Fields era was doomed before it began.
On January 10, 2021, the Chicago Bears lost a Wild Card Round Playoff match-up to the New Orleans Saints 21 to 9. The Bears’ offense had only managed 3 points the entire game until Jimmy Graham scored a meaningless touchdown as time expired.
For most of the season, the 8-8 Bears seemed to be a team worse than their record. There was some talent on the roster, but the quarterback position continued to plague them. Despite being a playoff team, it appeared that the Bears needed a new direction.
But George McCaskey and Ted Phillips didn’t quite think so. GM Ryan Pace was popular with the Bears’ Chairman, so he decided to give Pace and head coach Matt Nagy one more chance. This set up a high-pressure situation for the next 11 months at Halas Hall for executives, coaches, veterans, and a rookie quarterback.
A Nearly Impossible Goal
The goals for 2021 were laid out for the Bears’ football operations. Figure out a way to fix the quarterback situation and make the playoffs.
That’s never a good plan. You never want to mix a must-win season with a rookie quarterback. Even people within football operations knew it wasn’t a good plan, but they were thrown a lifeline, and they certainly were going to take advantage of it, so they went to work. They tried to land a veteran quarterback, they looked at Carson Wentz and Derek Carr. They even entered discussions with the Seattle Seahawks over Russell Wilson, but nothing came to fruition, and they knew their quarterback was going to have to be obtained through the draft.
They had a plan, if Justin Fields fell to the 11th pick, they would strike, and that’s exactly what they did.
The Bears sent their 2022 first-round pick to the New York Giants to come up and draft the Ohio State quarterback.
Pace, Nagy and company knew they had a special player on their hands, but they knew he needed some time to learn. They knew he struggled finding blitz beaters. His eyes telegraphed his throws. He needed better field vision and better timing to avoid sacks.
They saw it on film, but they felt it could work with a little more seasoning. So they had a plan: give Andy Dalton the reigns and let Justin learn behind him. The only problem was that Dalton didn’t make it two weeks into the regular season before he was injured.
Dalton was injured in week two against the Bengals, and Fields came in and finished the game. Fields had been QB2 with Nick Foles inactive as QB3 because Matt Nagy wanted to take advantage of Fields’ athleticism and get him on the field for select packages. Fields then entered the week three game against the Cleveland Browns, as the starter and it was one of the worst game plans and performances the league has ever seen.
Why didn’t the Bears keep Fields as QB2 and have Nick Foles start that game? Maybe they felt pressure from the public or from upper management, but whatever the reason, Fields played against Cleveland and had a dismal debut.
Fields’ performances improved as the season progressed, building to a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on November 8th. The Bears lost 29 to 27, but Fields threw for 290 yards and had a dynamite second half, including hitting Darnell Mooney for a touchdown pass with 90 seconds to go to give the Bears a 27-26 lead. However, it was a lead the defense couldn’t keep (certainly the officials may have played a role in that).
The season ended, and Fields’ rookie year certainly wasn’t what fans had hoped for, but the arrow was pointing up.
Unfortunately, a 6-11 record wasn’t enough to keep Pace and Nagy here for the 2022 season and major changes were made. Not only was Matt Nagy fired, but Ryan Pace lost his job as well.
A new regime was on the horizon.
Trying to win, even when the organization isn’t
Former NFL executive Bill Polian was brought in to help consult and usher in a new regime. When the dust settled from the search, former Kansas City Chief executive Ryan Poles was the team’s new General Manager, and former Indianapolis Colts’ Defensive Coordinator Matt Eberflus was the team’s head coach.
As bad as it was for Mitch Trubisky to have a new coaching staff around him in year two, at least the regime that drafted him was still in the building. Fields now had to learn a new offense and perform in it, but do it while a regime that didn’t draft him started building up the roster in their vision. Poles tore the roster down around him completely and left him with little to no talent to work with.
The 2022 season was a rough season (intentionally). New GM Ryan Poles stripped the roster down to the studs, and despite the lack of talent on the field with the Bears’ second-year quarterback, there was a five-game stretch in October and November where the offense averaged 30 points a game, and Fields gained national attention with his explosive playmaking ability. But Fields was injured after that fifth game (against the Falcons) and was forced to miss time, and when he did return, he clearly wasn’t himself.
Health became part of Justin Fields’ evaluation. For the second straight season, he had missed multiple games due to injury. Some of those injuries were out of his control, but the Bears also wondered how much of those injuries were self-inflicted because of not seeing open throws from the pocket and holding onto the football too long.
The Bears stumbled to a 3-14 season, but thanks to a week 18 victory by Lovie Smith and the Houston Texans, the Bears landed the first pick in the draft. That victory by the Texans had a massive trickle-down effect on Fields’ future in Chicago.
A Do-Or-Die Season
The path the following offseason seemed clear. The Bears had a QB they had questions about, but they saw his explosive ability and had a vision of the quarterback he could be. Despite having QB prospects available with the first pick like Bryce Young or C.J. Stroud, Poles felt the best thing at this point was to continue the evaluation of Justin Fields and trade the top pick for as much as possible and give a true evaluation of Justin Fields for the 2023 season.
Poles brought in veteran Nate Davis and drafted rookie Darnell Wright to beef up the line. He traded the first pick to the Carolina Panthers for a pile of draft picks and wide receiver DJ Moore. Moore gave Fields a true number one. Poles then added Tyler Scott and Roschon Johnson on day three of the draft.
Fields’ team around him wasn’t going to be mistaken for the 1999 Rams, but they certainly were a capable group that would allow Fields to take the next steps if he could take advantage of a better supporting cast.
After two years of failing Justin Fields for a variety of reasons, the Bears were hoping that what they had done for this season would mitigate any previous damage. He had an offensive line that he could trust, he had a few weapons that would regularly get open, and he had consistency with the coaching staff, remaining in the same system for the second consecutive year. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.
The season started with a thud. After three straight losses, it seemed that nothing was headed in the right direction and perhaps head coach Matt Eberflus wouldn’t even keep his job for the season, but things began to settle. Eventually, it would be thanks to the defense, but originally, it was thanks to Justin Fields.
After two outstanding performances against the Denver Broncos and Washington Commanders, Fields and the Bears had their first win of the season, and while 1-4 wasn’t what anyone had in mind, perhaps things were finally headed in the right direction.
But it all came to a screeching halt against the Minnesota Vikings.
The first Vikings game of the year was a crushing blow to Fields’ evaluation for the 2023 season. Not only did it show significant regression from Fields’ previous two performances, but many of the same lingering issues that were concerns were clearly not showing improvement.
Fields was still holding onto the football too long, something you can’t do against a blitz-heavy defense. He missed the appropriate throw on multiple occasions, and on one of those instances early in the second half, holding onto the ball too long led to a hit that injured his thumb and that injury would keep him out of action for the next month.
The first Vikings game was a crushing blow on multiple levels. One, it left doubt if the two games prior were more circumstantial and not actual progress, two, it would keep Fields out until late November. Fields needed to show he could stay healthy for a full season, after another injury that would result in him missing four games, the Bears doubted if he was a QB they could rely on for 17 games a year. They also had doubts about his improvement and Fields would only leave himself a month and a half when he returned to prove he was the quarterback everyone hoped he could be.
Fields had to overcome hurdle after hurdle his first two seasons thanks to the Bears’ failures, but this last major obstacle, the problem of simply not having enough time to prove yourself, was due to Fields, not the Bears.
While Fields was out, something else really started to take focus. The Carolina Panthers appeared headed towards the worst record in the NFL. Rookie Bryce Young was struggling mightily, and the Panthers couldn’t win football games. This significantly played a role for Justin Fields, as the Bears held the Panthers’ first-round pick in 2024, thanks to the trade that Ryan Poles made for the number one pick the year prior.
Tyson Bagent kept the team afloat during Fields’ absence, going 2-2 in his four starts, The Bears were now at 3-7. If this season was going to pivot, Fields was going to have to perform.
After blowing a double-digit fourth-quarter lead to the Detroit Lions in Fields’ return, the Bears needed to start winning some games quickly. They started doing that the following week with a 12-10 win against the Minnesota Vikings. The Bears kicked a game-winning field goal with 10 seconds remaining after Fields hit DJ Moore to set up the kick. Bears fans rejoiced that Fields had a game-winning drive in the fourth quarter and was proving his value.
Unfortunately, in a lot of ways, that game hurt Fields more than it helped him. Fields had a crippling fumble in the fourth quarter that could have cost them the game, but the defense held strong and gave him another opportunity. On what would be the game-winning drive, Fields had back-to-back plays where he held onto the ball too long, missed multiple open receivers, and threw the ball away on a play that most of the time is called intentional grounding and would have cost the Bears the game, but the officials let it slide. Fields hit Moore to set up the game-winner from Cairo Santos on the next play.
The Bears had a great team win the following week against Detroit, improving their record to 5-8, and if they could manage a win against Cleveland, it would set them up for a late push for the playoffs. A playoff berth is the exact kind of thing Justin Fields would need for the front office and coaches to believe in him.
The Cleveland game was another tough blow for Fields, possibly the final knockout. Yes, he got them out to a 17-7 lead and the defense couldn’t hold it, but how much did the failed offensive drives hurt them?
The Bears fourth quarter possessions had the following results: turnover on downs, punt, punt, punt, interception.
The Bears fell to 5-9. While mathematically alive for the playoffs, that door had been all but shut.
The Bears won their next two games against two subpar teams, and if Fields evaluation hadn’t been finished yet, it certainly was after another failed opportunity to unseat the Green Bay Packers in the final game of the season. A game the Bears lost while the offense only managed to score 9 points and failed to reach the endzone at all.
The Evaluation
Like most organizations, the Bears front office worked throughout the season to evaluate the roster including the quarterback position. When the regular season finished, Ryan Poles and his football operations had come to the conclusion that Justin Fields did not show enough during the season to prove he should remain the Bears starting quarterback.
Was it all bad? Of course not. Fields showed he was an excellent leader. The entire roster and the fans strongly supported him. He continued to show dynamic playmaking ability throughout the season, and he put his arm talent on display multiple times. But how Fields operates within the body of a game simply didn’t improve. In fact, in some areas, it even regressed.
Fields improved his sack rate, but it still sat above 10%, a rate that isn’t sustainable for an NFL quarterback. Despite having better talent, his completion percentage was flat year over year. His TD% dropped from the previous season. His yards per attempt also dropped. His passer rating was flat. Fields was turning the ball over less, but he wasn’t making the most of his opportunities.
In the end, Fields showed that while he improved the turnovers and sacks slightly, the numbers showed he was basically the same passer as he was in 2022. He showed no significant growth in any passing area, and his passing stats were in the bottom third of the league in almost every category.
The Bears knew that this quarterback would not be their future. They still needed to evaluate the rookie quarterbacks, but they were comfortable in saying that Justin Fields would not receive a new contract in Chicago. The financial aspect was a big part of this. They were not comfortable giving Justin Fields a contract that starting quarterbacks demand in this league. The Bears would move on when the opportunity presented itself.
It became clear early in the offseason that the question was not whether the Bears should keep Justin Fields or draft a quarterback, but which quarterback they should select with the first pick.
A Unique Prospect
Enter Caleb Williams. On January 15th, the USC quarterback declared his intentions to enter the NFL Draft. Williams’ talent was unique, he was evasive in the pocket, he could throw the ball 60 yards down the field with a flick of the wrist. Scouts hated saying it because it felt unfair, but when you asked scouts for a comp, they continued to return with one name: Patrick Mahomes. Some scouts used the term generational. Even if others weren’t ready to put that kind of label on Williams, it was clear that the tape showed the type of quarterback prospect that only comes along every five or ten years.
But the noise and rumors around Williams were loud. He wasn’t well-liked in the locker room. He was selfish. He didn’t care about his teammates. He wanted to circumvent the CBA and get a huge contract immediately. He wanted ownership of whatever team selected him. The rumors were everywhere. What was true? What was false? The Bears had work to do.
The Bears did as much background work as you could possibly imagine. They interviewed Kliff Kingsbury (one of Williams’ coaches at USC) for their open offensive coordinator position, and they peppered him about Caleb Williams. Any time their scouts or executives spoke with one of Caleb Williams’ former teammates, whether at USC or his freshman year at Oklahoma, they asked those players about Williams. The Bears weren’t sure what they were going to hear, but what they heard certainly didn’t agree with what the social media noise was stating.
Caleb Williams was not a problem. He was a talented prospect with a good head on his shoulders who was respected and well-liked by his teammates. He was not the diva that social media tried to portray him as.
Williams was different, there’s no doubt about that. He paints his nails (as a tribute to his mother, a nail technician), he shows his emotions in public, famously crying with his parents after a hard loss, he’s one of the first huge benefactors of the new NIL college football landscape, entering the NFL, instead of about to become a millionaire, as one already and had been one for the last couple of seasons. This was not like anyone the Bears have ever considered (or even had the opportunity to select), but all signs were pointing in the right direction.
Creating a Fields Market
The Bears understood their situation. They were zeroing in on Caleb Williams, but they also needed to take a close look at Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, and JJ McCarthy, the other highly touted quarterback prospects in this draft. They needed to know that if things went south with Williams for any reason, they had another quarterback they were confident in selecting.
While they did their work here, they needed to see what opportunities they would have to trade Fields this offseason. So the Bears went to work, quietly pushing things publicly through the media that the market for Fields was a second-round pick. ESPN’s Adam Schefter regularly suggested that Fields could go for as much as a first-round pick if there were enough teams interested.
As NFL teams headed to Indianapolis for the NFL Combine, Poles was expecting to see the market come into focus and send Fields to his new team, but that didn’t happen. Even when Poles met the media, he spoke as honestly as any GM probably ever has about trading their current starting quarterback. He talked about saying if they do it, they want to “do right by Justin” and not have him “live in the gray” for too long.
It was clear that Poles wanted this trade done quickly. He had the market set, he just had to wait for offers.
Unfortunately, they didn’t come.
The conversation in the media started to pivot. It wasn’t a round two pick; it was a day two pick. That didn’t help; the offers were still not coming in like the Bears expected.
There were plenty of reasons for this, but the bottom line is that other teams looked at Justin Fields, and while they all recognize his dynamic playmaking ability, it was the failure to execute in structure that really caused other teams concern.
Teams don’t look at just this past season, they want to look at the big picture, and the bottom line, after three seasons, Fields’ passing numbers look alarmingly similar to Sam Darnold’s on multiple levels. Certainly, Darnold doesn’t have the dynamic athleticism of Fields, but teams look at Fields as a QB that only has one year of control — the consensus was that teams would not pick up Fields 5th year option when they didn’t have him in the building long enough to form their own evaluation — and didn’t have the passing chops to step in and execute their existing offense.
The media had connected the dots to certain teams that were win-now teams that didn’t have a quarterback. The Atlanta Falcons went with Kirk Cousins. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers retained Baker Mayfield. The Pittsburgh Steelers signed Russell Wilson. Even a team like the Las Vegas Raiders, which seemed like a long shot due to the hiring of Luke Getsy, shut the door when they signed Gardner Minshew.
The Fields market never materialized, and the Bears needed to recalibrate the situation.
Doing Right by Justin
After the first wave of free agency ended and basically every starting QB spot had been filled, there was a real question of where Fields could even go and what the Bears could possibly get for him.
Suddenly, Ian Rapoport is stating on NFL Network that the reason Fields hadn’t been traded yet was because the Bears hadn’t finished their evaluation of Caleb Williams, something they weren’t going to be able to do until March 20th when they visited Williams at his Pro Day and would have the opportunity to meet with him in person (something they have only been able to do to this point for a total of 18 minutes).
The Bears were spinning the story through the media, not only for their sake but also for Fields’ sake. The Bears had been trying to find a trade partner for Fields; anything to the contrary was simply not true. When Fields was traded before Williams’ Pro Day, it was clear that those statements by Rapoport were simply trying to have everyone save face.
There became talk that Fields could backup a high-level QB for a contender. The Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles all needed a better backup for their starters. There was talk perhaps the Rams needed a successor for Matthew Stafford, who is almost certainly entering the final year of his career, but when the Pittsburgh Steelers traded Kenny Pickett to the Philadelphia Eagles, that eliminated one potential trading partner with the Bears but re-opened another one in the Steelers.
The Steelers had named Russell Wilson their starter, but with Kenny Pickett now in Philadelphia and Mason Rudolph now with the Tennessee Titans, the Steelers only had 1 QB on the roster, and Wilson was only committed to for the 2024 season.
Mike Tomlin has always been a fan of Justin Fields’ abilities. President Omar Khan felt similarly. Offensive coordinator Arthur Smith did not hold Fields in as high of regard as Tomlin and Khan. In fact, Smith had the opportunity to draft Fields back in 2021 as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons but passed on him, despite not having his quarterback position settled, for tight end Kyle Pitts.
But when the president and head coach like a player, the offensive coordinator isn’t going to have much say in that decision.
Rapoport reported that the Bears had at least four other teams interested in Fields, once the asking price fell, but Brad Biggs refuted that report recently on The Score.
Personally, I had heard one team had a late five ready to offer, and another team had offered a fourth-round pick. I was never able to confirm those offers.
Had the Bears gotten a day 2 pick for Fields, he would most likely be headed to whatever team offered it. But when that offer didn’t come, and Poles was looking at a day three pick in exchange for his quarterback, he worked with Fields’ agent, David Mulugheta, and found the best opportunity for Justin Fields moving forward. That opportunity was going to be in Pittsburgh.
So Poles finalized the deal, receiving a conditional 6th-round pick in 2025 that can be a 4th-round pick if Fields plays more than half the snaps this upcoming season. That condition is unlikely (unless Russell Wilson is injured), and the pick will probably remain a 6th-round selection.
If Fields impresses the Steelers, he will have an opportunity to start, if not later this season, in 2025 if the Steelers are willing to sign him to a new contract.
An era has ended
When Fields was selected back in April of 2021, it was possibly the most excitement the fan base has ever had about a quarterback. However, that excitement resulted in three sub-.500 records and a conditional 6th-round pick. The end of this era was hard for many fans, some were ready to move on, but some couldn’t see how the Bears could give up on such an electric player.
Unfortunately for Fields, it wasn’t his strengths that were the determining factor in that decision, but rather his weaknesses.
The last few months have been polarizing for Bears fans. The bottom line is that this situation was not black and white. It was very nuanced. The Chicago Bears failed Justin Fields in several ways. He was dropped into an impossible situation as a rookie, had to deal with massive turnover in his second year, and was given one opportunity in year three to overcome all the obstacles the Bears previously threw in his way.
And while that certainly doesn’t set up a quarterback for success, it’s fair to say that Justin Fields failed to succeed. Perhaps it was due to the circumstances he suffered through his first two seasons, but regardless, when they did give him the opportunity to show that it was only the circumstance that failed and not the quarterback, he wasn’t able to do so.
Justin Fields is now a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Ryan Poles and the Chicago Bears have moved on. Most likely, Caleb Williams will be a Chicago Bear in five weeks. The Bears have to finalize this evaluation process and meet with him in person, but it’s highly probable that by the end of this week or the beginning of next week, the major NFL insiders will be reporting that the meetings with Caleb Williams went well, and all expectations are that the Chicago Bears will select him with the first overall pick on April 25th.
The Justin Fields saga is one of the most unique in NFL history. It will lead to seeing plenty of Steelers jerseys with a “1” on them this fall at Soldier Field. It’s one that is hard to explain and even harder to fully understand. The only certainty is that Justin Fields is no longer a Chicago Bear.
Even if Caleb Williams becomes the greatest quarterback in Chicago Bears history, there will always be a contingent of Bears fans who, when they look back at the Justin Fields era, will wonder, “What if?”
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