Matt Nagy’s Staff Apparently Knew Justin Fields Was Going To Fail
Desperation makes people do crazy things. Going into 2021, everybody knew that head coach Matt Nagy and GM Ryan Pace were desperate. The Chicago Bears seemed to be slowly deteriorating from playoff contender to aging has-been. Part of the problem was, once again, inconsistent quarterback play. Unless they managed to address the issue that off-season, a lot of people would end up losing their jobs. Nagy and Pace tried to work out a deal for Russell Wilson, but Seattle backed out at the last second. That left one alternative: the draft. After an intense spring of evaluations, they settled on Justin Fields of Ohio State as the one they wanted most.
Everybody knew Trevor Lawrence was going #1 overall to Jacksonville. Rumors persisted that Zach Wilson of BYU and Trey Lance of North Dakota State would soon come off the board. From there, it became a question of how long Fields and Alabama’s Mac Jones had to wait. Once the former fell to the 11th spot in the 1st round, the Bears couldn’t wait any longer. They swung a deal with the Giants to move up for him. Everybody was excited. It was felt the team had scored the QB with the most upside in the entire draft.
As it turns out, internal belief in him may have been exaggerated publicly.
While there was plenty of hope inside Halas Hall that he could blossom into something special, Tyler Dunne of Go Long revealed that several people had reservations about Fields. They felt his processing speed wasn’t anywhere close to fast enough for the NFL level. This is why Nagy tried to sit him for that 2021 in favor of Andy Dalton. Giving Fields time to adjust could yield the results they wanted. That was more wishful thinking to many.
Fields ran for 1,000+ yards in Year 2 but, as one ex-Bears coach observed, he was more “chicken with his head cut off.” This was never sustainable.
Fundamentals can improve. That’s physical.
Processing is a different animal. Processing is more ingrained.
This is why both coaches and personnel agree that a redshirt year would not have changed much.
“When you watch him, watch his eyes,” says one of Fields’ former coaches. “He tries to see the whole thing and doesn’t see anything. His eyes are all over the place and it’s just really hard to watch. It’s just bad football.”
One league source plugged into the Bears first showers Fields with praise. He calls him a “phenomenal athlete” who throws a gorgeous ball. But he’s seen the quarterback, down-in and down-out, fail to decode the defense pre-snap and anticipate where to throw the ball post-snap. To him, it’s impossible for Fields — for any QB — to enhance that inner processor. “Maybe you can add some RAM or extra memory to your computer,” he says, “but whatever processor you have, that’s what you have.”
This Justin Fields story explains so much.
It reveals why he fell in the draft in the first place. Other teams likely saw the same things those Bears staff members did. The difference is the two men at the top felt they had no choice. They needed a home run swing at quarterback. He was the best they could get. Remember that former executive Josh Lucas admitted Fields and Jones were neck and neck through most of the evaluation process. That says a lot about how high they actually were on him. They opted to go with the superior athlete, which isn’t a surprise.
Everybody knew the Bears were making a mistake when they let Nagy and Pace stay for another year. They were giving two men on the hot seat full control of team resources to save their own skins basically. Justin Fields had the most star power and was the easiest to sell to the fanbase. From there, it was about buying time until they felt the kid was ready. Two weeks into the season, Dalton injured his knee. This forced Fields into action. The team struggled, went 6-11, and everybody was fired.
Once Ryan Poles came in, he probably concluded that a quarterback change was needed early on. However, he would have to wait until the roster was in a better place. Only getting a 6th round pick once Fields was traded pretty much confirmed everything mentioned above.