adam

With 2 wins projected right now, Bears looking to slide to #11. 1 win puts them at #7 0 wins keeps them at #5 3 wins vaults them to #16

For the Bears to make the playoffs, CAR would have to win at least one more game, and that would not be good for the draft pick.

I would trust Kurt Warner's assessment over most others. He excelled at the highest levels. I would not trust current or former teammates as they are very loyal and rarely throw each other under the bus.

One of the issues is he makes the tough throws (Kmet TD, Tonyan drop, etc) but misses the easy ones. The problem is the offense is predicated on the easy ones.

He doesn't trust what he sees, that's where that hesitation comes in.

There are a ton of examples of QBs excelling with weak supporting casts. That continually gets used for Fields and the assessment of Fields should consider his surroundings, but they should only factor minimally into the overall assessment. I am just done speculating on the QB position. The fact that we are having this discussion in Week 15 should be a huge red flag. I hope he can turn it around and have 3 strong games to finish the year ending it with a Packers loss that knocks them out of the playoffs. However, if Love outplays him or if he looks really bad in any of the last 3 games against subpar defenses, I think the decision will be an easy one for Poles.

I wish I knew. I am going more off what I think the Bears are going to do than what I think. My opinion is not going to sway them one way or another. If they keep Fields, I am good with that, hopefully they can build a strong enough supporting cast around him to lift him up. I am rooting for whoever they run out there. If Poles doesn't believe any of the QBs coming out have a higher ceiling than Justin, he will trade the pick again.

Part of his job is to stop the bleeding, help out the defense when they are struggling. Denver is a terrible example for Fields. Fields literally lost the game as one of the Broncos TDs was on his fumble, that gave them 7 pts and the Bears lost by 3. The defense only allowed 24 pts, enough to win, but the offense scored 28 but gave up 7 for a net of 21. Then after the bleeding continued and there was a chance to win the game they had a turnover on downs and an INT to seal it. In the DET first meeting, after they were up 26-14, the offense went 3 and out for 1 yard (26 second drive) and 1 play fumble/safety. They needed one first down and it was game over, and they couldn't get it. The defense gets blame here too but the Bears need a QB that can get that first down. Fields always seems to come up short, whether it is his fault or not.

It is a very tough defense, and things were not in Fields favor at all, but the Bears faced a bunch of second stringers for the Browns and still struggled on offense. It just felt like the Browns could care less about Fields running. That wasn't a threat to them, which gave them an easy assignment to just meet at the QB. The defense is what kept them in this game though.

I don't understand how Fields gets so many balls tipped at the LOS. Is his arm angle too low?

That's the thing, if the player can only be good in the right circumstances, they are replaceable. Purdy is looking great, but Lance, Jimmy G, Nick Mullens, and Beathard all looked very pedestrian in the same offense over the last year. So Purdy would probably be good in most offenses, maybe not to his current level, but he wouldn't all of sudden be terrible. There are guys in the league doing more with less than Fields, which tells you where he falls.

Fields best trait is his escapability and his off script plays, but he still struggles with traits that are more important to a sustained offense (playing with timing, throwing to the MoF, pocket awareness/internal clock). Most QBs just need to be "mobile". Fields has yet to break off a super long run this year because teams have figured out how to contain him. Once that strength is neutralized, he is a below average QB. I hate the bad supporting cast or bad coaching argument when DeShaun Watson had a very similar supporting cast in his 2nd year, Hopkins and Fuller at WR and Lamar Miller and Alfred Blue (he needed the money) at RB. With that group, he threw for over 4100 yards, 26 TD, 9 INT and rushed for 551 yds and 5 TDs. He had 5 4th Quarter comebacks that season. We have lowered the bar so far for Fields, that we only want 3500 and 500 from him, yet in the last 4 games since coming back from injury he is averaging only 193 passing yards a game with 3 TD passes which is bottom 5 in the league over that period. Nothing has changed.

Nate Davis is crap. I am sorry for his loss, but man he is bad. Once Jenkins went out the entire interior was getting owned. The edges were ok, but with that amount of speed on the edges, you have to be able to step up to avoid that pressure, otherwise you are standing right in the path of a speed rush around the OT. Fields got strip sacked on one of them. If he steps up, they run right by him. They need a lot more rollouts, bootlegs, and misdirection. The offensive game plan allowed Cleveland to keep 8 guys in the box and rush 5-6 every time straight at Fields. When they did that, like the Velus plays, they got some big plays out of it, but then never went back. You would think with all that pressure, Fields would throw the ball sooner but he still held on. He missed a few and was late on a few. All he needs to do is hit 2-3 of those and it's game over. His teammates didn't help, but he still needs to improve. They could DFA Mooney today and it would improve the team. Give the snaps to someone who cares and is going to at least try. He has turned into ARob 2.0. It's like he has writer's block, but in this case it is QB's block.

I totally understand. However, Fields has done neither. If he was a heroics guy, the Bears would be 8-6.

I wouldn't say he is a bust, he was the 4th QB selected. I know he was a first rounder, but it was him or Jones at that point. I would say he is at a good backup and spot starter level, and a better version of Taysom Hill and/or Gardner Minshew. He can win a few, lose a few, but ultimately does not move the needle enough at the most important position on the field. So the net result is almost negligible.

Yeah, I wanted a big enough sample size, 4 games was enough for me. Fields needed to show me he was head and shoulders above an average QB and I just haven't seen it. Just say he Tonyan doesn't drop the ball and they win, it still is a bad game. That was an awesome throw, but there is not enough in between the great and the bad.

I love this one. My only addition would be extending Fields to a 3yr/$75M deal (like Geno) as a bridge contract.

Ryan never recovered from that loss. The Falcons had one more winning season (10-6 the following year), then Ryan went 5 straight seasons with a losing record and just like that he is out of the league.

Cards are 2-3 in their last 5, Murray is back, McBride (TE) is having a huge year, Conner is very solid on the ground. Bears are favored by 4.5, which says Vegas likes them this week. I am going Bears 24-17 which hurts the Bears draft position and helps the Cards stay close to the Panthers. The Bears normally beat bad teams.

PFF Grades: Defense dominated: Sweat 89.5, Johnson 85.3, Edwards 82.5 (Poles needs to extend Johnson now), Jackson 53.1, and Gordon 52.8. I have not heard Gordon's name called much lately. Offense was terrible: Jenkins 70.7 was the best offensive player with 10 or more snaps. The worst was Tonyan at 35.2, Nate Davis was 38.1. I do not think Davis is the answer at G. Fields was 48.8. Fields QBR for the game was a 16.6, 3rd lowest of the week (only DeVito and Ridder were lower). That drops Fields to 42.4 with 3 games remaining. 50.0 is league average (no stats).

The answer can be all of the above, but at some point, the elite players overcome all the obstacles. It just seems like Fields falls flat when the team needs him the most. On the 4th and 1 play, Mooney makes a bad block, but Fields knows the pressure is going to come from that side, and he only has one guy to beat for a yard and he gets tripped up, doesn't put his hand down to keep his balance (Lamar did this 3 or 4 times last night), or doesn't try a stiff arm or juke. He could've even faked a pass to make the guy jump then run right by. I posted in another thread, but Fields really has one game in his career that he won, the game against WAS. Outside of that game, there are no other wins that Fields was so dominant that he carried the team to victory. He has 2x 4Q comebacks, one was when Roquan intercepted the Mills pass, then Fields kneeled down before the GW FG. The other one was the win against MIN where they didn't score a TD. That's it, he has no other GWDs or 4QCs in 35 starts.

The only other scenario I can think of is if the Bears offer Fields a short extension, like 3 years for $75M (same as Geno Smith), a top 20 QB contract. Then still draft a QB, but sit that QB for Year 1 (unless he beats out Fields in the offseason). That would be way more than Mayfield and Minshew got and would give Fields a substantial raise from his expected $6M in 2024. So basically Poles can hedge his bets again while not killing himself with a bad contract. Fields gets a few years of predictable pay and not a long contract that would extend beyond his prime years, so if the light turns on, he would have a huge payday coming a year later than the original rookie contract length (big contract in Year 6 vs Year 5).

I doubt it, this is his 2nd set of coaches, both who believed they could unlock something. LONG POST COMING - SORRY IN ADVANCE: I did a little digging and looked at Fields career numbers vs the collective QBs that played in the same offenses, with same players, and same coaches as he did over the last 3 seasons. Here are the passing numbers: Fields - 35 starts, 8-27 W-L, 532-883, 60.2%, 6,088 yds, 38 TD, 29 INT, 165 yds per game, 6.9 Y/A, 126 sacks, 2 4Q Comebacks, 1x 300yd passing game, 25 Att/g Other QBs - 13 starts, 6-7 W-L, 296-465, 63.7%, 2,947yds, 14 TD, 17 INT, 227 yds per game, 6.3 Y/A, 31 sacks, 2 4Q Comebacks, 2x 300yd passing games, 36 Att/g (Dalton, Bagent, Foles, Peterman, Siemian) Fields obviously has a huge advantage in rushing, especially from last year, but also led with fumbles by a large margin, so the TD to Turnover ratio is a lot closer if you add rushing. The biggest thing that stands out to me is Fields numbers are way too close to some bottom of the barrel QBs (Peterman, Siemian, etc) in the same conditions. If you add Fields' rushing numbers the yards per game are much closer, but Fields is still lower (which I thought was odd), so while he scored more, the offense was worse. Then as you move right along the stats, the most glaring difference is sacks. In 2.5x starts, Fields has 4x the sacks. Those are basically a triple negative plays (fewer pass attempts, lost yardage, and loss of down). So even though Fields has a better TD ratio, especially with his rushing scores, the negative plays outweigh them. Fields has 155 Sacks+INTs (4.43/g), while the other QBs have 48 (3.69/g). If I include fumbles, it obviously makes it worse on Fields. Even without the fumbles, every game Fields basically has one extra impactful negative play than the other QBs, which equates to basically 2 pts lost per game. With 35 starts, that is 70 pts taken off the board (as just a difference to the other QBs) not overall. Again, this is Fields compared to arguably some really bad QBs. Fields should be light years ahead of these guys and yet ultimately the net results are very similar. The last thing is, Fields has won 8 games in 2.5 seasons of starting, here are the teams he beat and how he performed in those wins: 1. DET (3-13-1) - Fields 209 yds passing, 0 TD, 1 INT, 82.7 QB Rating 2. LVR (10-7) - Fields 111 yds passing, 1 TD, 0 INT, 91.9 QB Rating 3. SF (13-4) - Fields 121 yds passing, 2 TD, 1 INT, 85.7 QB Rating 4. HOU (3-13-1) - 106 yds passing, 0 TD, 2 INT, 27.7 QB Rating 5. NE (8-9) - Fields 179 yds passing, 1 TD, 1 INT, 1 Rush TD, 85.2 QB Rating 6. WAS (4-10) - Fields 282 yds passing, 4 TD, 0 INT, 125.3 QB Rating 7. MIN (7-7) - Fields 217 yds passing, 0 TD, 0 INT, 87.3 QB Rating 8. DET (10-4) - Fields 223, 1 TD, 0 INT, 1 Rush TD, 88.3 QB Rating How many of those games did Fields actually win? WAS for sure, he was in the zone that game. That is the one game that he outscored the opponent by himself. However, he doesn't have any other wins with 3 TDs, which is what I would consider a QB Win. So out of 35 starts, he has 1 QB Win. That unfortunately is not enough in this day and age of the NFL. He is the most athletically gifted QB the Bears ever have and may be even top 5 in NFL history, but he has not evolved as a passer enough, and when the opponent takes away him as a running threat (send Edge to him every time), we see the results. As a passer, he is basically Gardner Minshew (stats way too close). Minshew is on his 3rd team in 4 years and looks to be a career backup, spot starter. So if you are Poles, you know this, you have seen it. If Fields puts in all that work in the offseason (he has amazing work ethic), between games, and this is all you get for all that effort, unfortunately, that sort of shows where his ceiling is in the NFL. The ceiling is not high enough to overcome the floor, and his games are too inconsistent week in and week out after 35 starts to continue to believe that he will somehow hit the switch and both the floor and ceiling will rise. Now the devil's advocate is that he had bad coaches, but even with the bad coaches, you would think a great QB would separate himself from the other QBs in the same system, especially thru 35 starts. Fields hasn't done that, or hasn't done it enough to warrant a huge contract and extension, AND for the team to forego drafting a QB. BLUF: Fields has improved over 2.5 years, but the development has not been great/fast enough to separate himself from other QBs (who in my opinion were subpar in general) in the same system/conditions. The final 3 games will be an audition for Fields for other teams that believe they can fix him. I honestly expect super conservative game plans to reduce the chance of INTs. These are the numbers and some of my opinion, but I believe it to be as close to factual as I know it. Again I apologize for the long post.

I honestly can't wait, got that huge contract and has coasted ever since.

Fields numbers are trending back to his mean. After that 2 game outburst before his injury, he jumped way ahead of his career averages. Now he is on pace for less TDs than last season per game and his overall yardage per game this year is only 25 more than last year. So the development we expected didn't happen and that's with DJ Moore and an improved OLine. Very unfortunate for him and the team.