Bears QB Justin Fields must turn it around quickly after rough first 15 games

There’s still time for Justin Fields to straighten out his season and show he can be a franchise quarterback, but he’s already in quite a deep hole.

No NFL quarterback has thrown fewer passes this season, or accomplished so little with them. Fields has the least yardage and highest interception percentage by a wide margin heading into the Bears’ game against the Giants on Sunday. And it’s hard to decide which is more jarring, his 51.1% completion rate or his 50.0 passer rating through three games. Both, again, are league lows.

There’s still a lot of hope for Fields because during his turbulent two seasons, there have been moments that spark it. And when the fans and organization want so badly for it to be true, it doesn’t take much to keep those dreams going.

Remember his wild touchdown run against the 49ers last season? The frenzied rally in Pittsburgh on “Monday Night Football”? The way he kept the Bears within reach deep into the fourth quarter against the Packers in his fourth career start?

All three of those games ended in defeat, by the way, but the focus was on Fields showing promise. At some point, however, he has to deliver on that promise by playing consistently. Almost any quarterback can pull off some big plays — or even big games — here and there.

Fields’ struggles are alarming because they’ve come at a time when everyone expected he’d be coming into his own. They’re also concerning because this isn’t a sharp departure from his overall performance last season. Through 15 career games, he has completed 57.8% of his passes and thrown for nine touchdowns against 14 interceptions for a 69.9 passer rating.

Over the last three decades, the list of quarterbacks who had a sub-70.0 rating through 15 games is scary — only sparsely decorated with players turning that around to achieve long-term success. It includes many more dreadful draft picks (David Carr, Rick Mirer, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington) than it does resurgent mainstays (Donovan McNabb, Alex Smith). The Bears’ 1999 first-round pick, Cade McNown, is on that list. Through his first 15 games, he was at 67.7.

And although passer rating is not the all-encompassing, defining statistic it sounds like, it does provide a reasonable sketch of a quarterback’s performance — minus his rushing prowess, which is a significant factor for Fields, who has 515 yards and three touchdowns as a runner.

Among the 16 quarterbacks who were first- or second-team on any of the foremost All-Pro lists over the last decade, the average passer rating for their first 15 games was 88.0.

Of the 11 quarterbacks — yes, 11 — who made the Pro Bowl last season, the average passer rating for their first 15 games was 90.8.

Passer ratings in that range aren’t amazing, but they pointed toward bright futures for most of the quarterbacks.

The lowest of that group was Josh Allen at 71.7, and he has been an MVP contender the last three seasons, so that provides at least a little optimism for Fields. Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Kirk Cousins were in the 70s through 15 games, as well.

One of the Pro Bowl quarterbacks last season was Mac Jones, whom the Patriots drafted four spots after the Bears took Fields at No. 11. Jones landed in the most favorable situation of any rookie that year and has made the most of it, currently leading the 2021 draft class with an 89.9 passer rating, 67.3% completion rate, 4,587 yards and 24 touchdown passes. He also has thrown a class-worst 18 interceptions, including three pick-sixes.

Fields, meanwhile, beats only the Jets’ Zach Wilson in passer rating (69.7) and completion percentage (55.6%), and he has the highest interception percentage at 4.4%.

There are a variety of mitigating factors that must be considered in Fields’ case. When Giants owner John Mara said of quarterback Daniel Jones in January, “We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up,” it was easy to imagine the same line coming from Bears chairman George McCaskey about Fields. There was so much wrong with his rookie season under former coach Matt Nagy that it’s hard to identify what the Bears actually accomplished with him. When Ryan Poles took over as general manager, he said the adverse circumstances clouded his evaluation of Fields.

Asked what good came out of his 2021 experience, Fields told the Sun-Times, “You may not know now why that happened last year, so I can’t fully answer that question for you, but you might find that out in the next two or three years. It’s just all about the journey.”

Fields spent the months before his rookie season stuck on second string behind journeyman Andy Dalton, and Nagy never seemed to know what to do with him. In his debut, he played five snaps sprinkled in against the Rams as part of a plan that was as confusing as it was ineffective. In Fields’ first start against the Browns, Nagy’s game plan was so disastrous that the Bears had their worst offensive output in more than 40 years and Nagy gave up play-calling shortly after.

There also were major flaws in the personnel assembled by former general manager Ryan Pace, leaving Fields to play behind an unreliable offensive line and throw to an inadequate crew of targets. The Bears are still seeking concrete proof that Poles has fixed those issues.

Nonetheless, Fields was the one who threw those passes. He’s not absolved from poor decisions and inaccurate throws because of what went on around him. As he grows, he’ll need to rise above imperfect circumstances.

But he needs to do it quickly. There’s only so long the Bears can wait.