Justin Fields should become a gadget player ala Taysom Hill. CMM.

[MWil23]

1 hour ago, incognito_man said:

He just got a new WR that's worth a top 34 pick (Claypool).

What they paid for him doesn’t always equal what he’s worth. 

[Sugashane]

Fields absolutely needs to do better as a passer but right now there are a handful of things that need addressed. 

1. Getsy- idk if Fields has the ability to audible or not but I'm going nuts seeing jailbreak blitzes and the HB or TE not being made to dump it off. A quick flat to keep the defense honest would be great. We also don't attack the middle of the field between 0-10 yards. For the lack of talent at WR and OL we are WAY too aggressive of a passing attack. Take the big bodies in Claypool and Harry and run some damn slants. 

2. OL - Starters have included Mustipher (C), Leatherwood (RT), Schofield and Reiff, and Reiff has been by far the best of that group. Jenkins has been in and out and Braxton Jones is a 5th round rookie who mostly has been solid. Whitehair is in a decline. The aggressive passing attack while rarely using the TE to chip is unfair to the OL, futher co.piunding Getsy's occasional idiocy. 

3. WR - Mooney is a solid #2 but nothing more. Claypool has only two games where he played in half the offensive snaps (idgaf if he doesn't know the pkaybook, tell him the route in the huddle. That's better than Pettis ffs). Pettis has had to be a starter for half the games, and ESB has been a 15 game starter this year. That's just gross to type 😕   And they don't seem to have a proper scramble drill process, which for this offense is asinine. Dozens of times Fields has had to escape the pocket and 1-2 WRs won't break off their routes to come back to him or fly downfield to make the defender choose Fields or them. That goes back to Getsy though IMO. 

4. Fields - he has some maddening tendencies that have started this year. Sidearming throws to the flats and screens and they usually sail, he doesn't throw the ball away when he should and tries to force the ball, and will follow a fantastic dart on a deep out by throwing it behind his guy or at their knees. IF he does have the ability to audible then he grossly underused it all season, and needs more help with presnap reads. I remember McVay doing a lot of help with Goff by getting the play in ASAP and helping until they cut communications. If that needs to happen then it should. 

 

There is plenty of blame to go around, but I also wonder if Fields is playing hero ball because he knows the defense is trash. There's a reason they are dead last in ppg, and Fields understands they're going to need 30 to win. He'll the Bears are 1-3 when scoring 28+ points. While we all know it's a tank year, that doesn't mean Fields or the few other players worth a damn will accept that, and they shouldn't. We were one score away from a tie or win in 7 games and without Fields compensating for the terrible roster we wouldn't be even close to that competitive. 

 

The frustrating part is that this should have happened last year. Nagy and Pace should have been fired and let the GM get his guy and not squander now 2 years of his rookie contract. Bears need a LOT of work in the offseason. Now they will have like $115 mil cap space but top players are going to cost a lot on their own, plus there is so much depth needed. Going to be an interesting offseason for sure. 

[HoboRocket]

20 hours ago, MWil23 said:

Like I have said for years now, a lot goes into a quarterback success/failure. In the above, Trubisky still likely flops and busts, but is that softened if he gets Andy Reid, a year to sit behind Alex Smith, along with Tyreke and Kelce? Undoubtedly.

Meanwhile, give Mahomes Matt Nagy and the Bears offensive situation. Does he still pan out? Probably. Is he the same guy we see today? Absolutely not, he’s maybe even ruined. I’ve seen the Browns, Bears, Texans, Bengals,  and other teams all kill young promising quarterbacks with not addressing the offensive line and archaic offenses.

Heck, the Cardinals could even be lumped in there. Say what you want about Murray's personality, but Kliff Kingsbury runs one of the most predictable and ineffective schemes in the league, and SO MUCH of the team's success relies on Murray's ability to improvise. Like, yeah they added Hollywood this off-season, but have you seen the games? They had one start-worthy NFL WR most games, and they run a ridiculous amount of just straight vertical routes. It worked early 2021, but AJ Green has been walking in a straight line downfield for 2 years now, and teams figured that play out a year and a half ago. Combine that with some of the most repetitive and poorly designed WR screens with some of the smallest WRs and worst blocking TEs in the league, and Murray is set up to fail. Add in a below-average to awful OL, and you get what it's been. He has to completely take over and do ridiculous things that have never been seen before in NFL history in order for the team to win, like in Week 2 against the Raiders.

Fields is in the same situation right now. And is time-to-throw based on the time to a pass rusher hitting him or getting within X yards of him? Because if so, yeah, his escapability probably helps his OL on that stat. Sure, maybe he won't develop greatly long-term, but this situation is not helping the eval whatsoever.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

As an outsider looking in, if the Bears don't give him some receiving talent you're going to repeat what the Ravens did by wasting his entire rookie contract.

[brownie man]

Ryan Poles needs to be fired

I keep saying this

I don’t think he’s the guy. He’s only done terrible moves since he got to Chicago. 
 

That Claypool trade was horrible

I have no confidence he’s going to get Chicago back on track 

they need to cut ties before he ruins their draft. This year is too important for them to get wrong. 

[Dr A W Niloc]

It won't matter until the defense is 20 rungs better than it is right now but a running QB such as Justin Fields seems perfect for the Bears.

[Sugashane]

18 hours ago, brownie man said:

Ryan Poles needs to be fired

I keep saying this

I don’t think he’s the guy. He’s only done terrible moves since he got to Chicago. 
 

That Claypool trade was horrible

I have no confidence he’s going to get Chicago back on track 

they need to cut ties before he ruins their draft. This year is too important for them to get wrong. 

I think that is a bit far off. He has done several things that set the Bears up for a lot of improvement.

Unloaded Mack for a 2nd, got Robert Quinn off the books in the future, has had some draft picks playing pretty well (though I'm still annoyed on a few people he passed on like Pickens and Pierce), etc. This is a tank year and there was never a question about it. So they will have $115 mil even before cuts/extensions/restructures. To do that they had to eat about $80 mil in dead cap too. All the FA signings are guys that can be cut for almost  nothing as well, so he has not tied into a bad contract - yet. He seems to have had a clear vision and voiced it to top brass. Probably was bluntly able to assess the roster sucked, there were bad deals that needed moved on from, and it was better to just take the lumps in one year rather than extend the normal Bears Purgatory of 5-8 wins.

That being said, he still has to make some moves to improve the OL and dramatically improve the DL. There needs to be a legit #1 WR, since he was dedicated to ripping the band-aid off in one go rather than let the team sit in mediocrity for 3-4 years he sat on his hands while guys were being dealt around the league. This FA class of WRs is underwhelming so I am assuming they make a trade at some point. But as far as the tank year, I'm a big supporter in that. Either set yourself up to make the team significantly better or fail completely. Pace did the same thing in Chicago, but he missed on the QB (among other failings, but that was like 90% of his tenure's doom). If Mahomes was drafted here he wouldn't have the same numbers of course, especially with Nagy calling the plays, but putting up only 15 points vs PHI in the postseason or averaging 17.5 PPG the next season is out of the question. But even he took 2-3 years to get rid of the bad/aging contracts. Poles did it in one year. It sucks seeing a second year of Fields' rookie contract wasted, especially since he elevated one of the worst teams to the 23rd scoring offense in the league. I pegged the Bears as a bottom 3 offense prior to the season.

To me this isn't Poles fault, it is Ted Phillips for lacking the balls to cut ties with Pace and Nagy in 2021 like he should have. I can't blame Poles for not hiring himself a year earlier. He hasn't done anything significant to winning yet, but its hard to do that when you're spending the year wiping the slate clean from the previous regime. Now come Jan of 2024 I may have some very different views but I'm going to at least give Poles a chance to build a team and have more data to back up my stance. If he fails to improve the roster from here on out, then THAT is 100% on Poles. He has the capital to make moves, has his HC, and has a QB with a lot of talent that still needs refinement. Its his job to take that and make something with it.

Interesting note, Ted Phillips is retiring so there will be a new President/CEO, likely someone like Kevin Warren. He might want his own GM in a few years if things aren't going well, so I doubt Poles and Eberflus get to make a move to draft another QB. They may be tied to Fields, which I hope so. Putting Poles' feet to the fire should accelerate the growth for the team.