After months spent running an updated version of the Bears’ offense, Justin Fields pushed back against it Wednesday, saying he wanted to play less “robotic” and more like “myself,” starting with the game at the Chiefs on Sunday.
“My goal this week is just to say ‘eff it’ and go out there and play football how I know to play football,” he said. “That includes thinking less and just going out there and playing off of instincts rather than so much, say, info in my head, data in my head. Just literally going out there and playing football. Going back to, ‘It’s a game,’ and that’s it.”
Asked why he was overthinking things, Fields pointed toward the coaching staff.
“You know, could be coaching, I think,” he said. “They are doing their job when they are giving me what to look at, but at the end of the day, I can’t be thinking about that when the game comes. I prepare myself throughout the week, and then when the game comes, it’s time to play free at that point. Thinking less and playing more.”
A player trying to publicly distance himself from the way he’s coached is a line rarely crossed. It was a major development at Halas Hall on a day that had plenty of competition.
“I just think when you’re fed a lot of information at a point in time and you’re trying to think about that info when you’re playing,” he said, “it doesn’t let you play like yourself.”
Fields then went off to practice. Only when he returned did he realize he might have said the quiet part out loud. In a rare move, Fields gathered reporters at his locker and said he was “never going to blame anything on the coaches,” even though he’d done just that in a news conference.
“Put it on me,” he said. “I need to play better. That’s it, point-blank. That’s what I should’ve said in the first place.”
Fields said something similar after coach Matt Nagy’s departure. In August 2022, he told the Sun-Times that under Nagy, he was “trying to be a little bit robotic” while playing alongside veterans Andy Dalton and Nick Foles. New offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, he said then, wanted him to follow certain rules but also use his instincts.
Now Fields is saying the offense would benefit from more of those instincts.
“I think that’s just the biggest thing for me is playing the game how I know how to play and how I’ve been playing my whole life,” he said. “That’s what I’ve got to get back to doing.”
One day after he ran for four yards on three carries, Fields met with coach Matt Eberflus and “expressed, you know, what he would like” in the offense, Eberflus said.
“We want him to play free,” Eberflus said. “I think it’s very important that as we work through this making sure that he does play free, that we coach him that way.”
What they’re doing now isn’t working. Fields ranks in the bottom 10 among NFL starters in passer rating, completion percentage and yards per pass. The Bears lost to the Packers by 18 in the season opener and by 10 to the Buccaneers, who were expected to finish near the bottom of the NFL.
Their defensive coordinator, Alan Williams, resigned Wednesday. Their offensive coordinator will have to spin Fields’ comments Thursday.
And, oh, yeah, the defending champion Chiefs await.
“Nobody is going to take anything personal,” Fields said. “If the coaches say we need to play better, I need to play better, I’m not taking that personal because I think everybody in here knows that I need to play better, including myself. They’re not going to take it personal if us as players go to them and say, ‘I didn’t like this call.’ They need to be better. We’re all grown men in the building, and we all can take it.
“It’s about working with each other, getting each other better, holding each other accountable and working toward the same goal. . . . I think everybody can do better around here, including myself.”
One glaring example took place when Fields took a sack, and fumbled, on third-and-13 from the Bucs’ 27 in the second quarter Sunday. He looked down the field, did nothing and — after about five seconds — was sacked.
This week, he plans to be different.
“I’m gone out of the pocket,” he said. “That’s why that happened — because [coaches] wanted me to work on staying in the pocket during the offseason, which, there’s times where you do. But when that internal clock goes off, that’s when you need to get out and extend the play, make a play. . . .
“I’ve got to extend the play, get out of the pocket, extend the play and do something with it. Make something shake.”
As it is, Fields shook up enough Wednesday.
