While Bears quarterback Justin Fields was recovering from his dislocated thumb earlier this season, coach Matt Eberflus gave him a challenge. In true Eberflus form, it was wrapped in a gimmick.
“The good coaches I’ve been around have the ability to [put an] image in people’s minds [of] what they want to do going into the future,” Eberflus said.
It wasn’t an acronym, like his H.I.T.S. principle: hustle, intensity, takeaways and (playing) smart. Rather, it was a number: 200. Eberflus wanted Fields’ box score to read 200: at least two touchdowns, either in the air or on the ground, plus zero turnovers and zero sacks.
“That’s pretty much my goal every game,” Fields said this week. “Sacks, they put us behind the sticks, of course, and you never want to turn the ball over to give the other team a short field. So definitely trying to avoid the turnovers and sacks.”
Fields hasn’t had a “200” yet this season. Leaguewide, it has happened only 29 times in 481 games. The Bills’ Josh Allen, the Chargers’ Justin Herbert, the Packers’ Jordan Love, the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, the Rams’ Matthew Stafford, the Texans’ C.J. Stroud and the Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa have each done it twice this season. The Cowboys’ Dak Prescott has done it three times.
Those players live up to the standard the Bears expect of Fields. General manager Ryan Poles will have to decide at the end of the season if he believes Fields can reach that level — or if USC’s Caleb Williams, the likely No. 1 overall draft pick, has a better chance.
With two games left — the Bears play their final home game Sunday against the Falcons — Fields has yet to position himself as the slam-dunk quarterback of the future. But he’s improving, in part because he has been conscious of taking care of the ball. In his first six games, he had a 3.7 interception percentage and a 12.9 sack percentage. In his five games since returning from the thumb injury, he has cut those figures almost in half — intercepted on 1.9% of his passes and sacked on 7% of his drop-backs. He has thrown one interception that wasn’t a Hail Mary pass.
“Any way you look at it, [sacks have] gone way down,” quarterbacks coach Andrew Jan-ocko said. “It’s a testament to him in how he’s getting the ball out, how he feels the progression and how he’s feeling the rush without just ditching it for no reason, too.”
Unfortunately, passing production has also gone down. Fields had 11 touchdowns through the air in his first six games and has four in his last five games. His passer rating before the injury was 91.6. It’s 77.2 since.
But the Bears like how he has been able to look down the field for completions when scrambling. That wasn’t happening at the start of the season.
“There’s a lot of good actual metrics there than you can look at, but there’s also things we look at on the tape that you didn’t see last year [and] you didn’t see at the beginning of the season,” Janocko said. “Think back to the game in Tampa and watching him go through progressions and watching his footwork and how he’s progressed. And his completions now that we didn’t see earlier in the season.”
A conversation between Fields and Eberflus is one reason for the improvement.
“They sat down, they talked about it, the importance of [sacks and turnovers],” offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said. “Again, [Eberflus] just gave him that mindset of taking care of the football, making sure that we limit the sacks. And I think since that point, Justin’s done a fabulous job of dealing with both those.”
