Bears failed Justin Fields, who in turn failed them

Bears quarterback Justin Fields. — The Bears and Justin Fields failed each other.

In the NFL, there’s no shortage of ways for teams to fail their players — and their players to fail them.

Look no further than the 2021 quarterback class, in which five passers — including Justin Fields — were drafted in the top 15. Three seasons later, three — including Fields, whom the Bears dealt to the Steelers on Saturday — are playing for a new team. A fourth is expected to be traded this offseason. Only the No. 1 overall pick, the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence, has been a moderate success.

Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Mac Jones and Fields started 109 games — and won 32.

The Bears’ failed partnership with Fields, then, is no outlier. But the events that led to their parting are unique — and something the Bears can’t afford to repeat when they draft a quarterback first overall next month.

The worst possible start

In 2021, then-general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy traded two first-round picks to move up and draft Fields. Because they faced a must-win season, though, they declared veteran Andy Dalton the starter. Nagy planned to develop Fields while he sat, something Nagy did in 2017 with future Chiefs superstar Patrick Mahomes.

Instead, Dalton bruised his knee in Week 2, and Fields made his first start the next week. What began as a time of excitement for Bears fans was instead one of the worst coaching performances in recent years. The Browns sacked Fields nine times and held the Bears to one net passing yard in a 26-6 win.

The Bears trailed by seven points at the start of the fourth quarter. Nagy stuck with Fields rather than insert Nick Foles, who was spotted on the sideline saying the offense wasn’t working.

“You almost can’t make it up, it was that bad,” Nagy said after the game.

The Bears went back to the drawing board. Nagy handed play-calling duties to coordinator Bill Lazor and held a meeting asking offensive players what they would do to change the offense.

A weak offensive line, coupled with Fields’ unwillingness to throw the ball away, led to him being sacked on a league-high 11.8% of his drop-backs in 2021.

Fields kept the starting job the rest of the season. Nagy asked chairman George McCaskey what he would do at quarterback. The question irked McCaskey, who told the coach he was “uncomfortable that you’re even asking me the question.”

Before the season ended, McCaskey hired former exec Bill Polian to evaluate the organization. His report led McCaskey to fire both Pace and Nagy at the end of the year.

Not much help

New GM Ryan Poles commenced a hard reboot of the Bears’ roster, trading edge rusher Khalil Mack — a symbol of the Bears’ lofty ambitions — to the Chargers and eventually moving linebacker Roquan Smith and defensive end Robert Quinn. The Bears paid a league-high $93.3 million in dead cap money — salaries paid to players no longer on the team — in 2022.

The result: Three of Fields’ Week 1 receivers in 2022 — Equanimeous St. Brown, Dante Pettis and Ihmir Smith-Marsette — were coming off seasons in which they caught fewer than 10 passes. The addition of Chase Claypool via trade later in the season somehow made the receiver room worse.

A pedestrian passing game designed by first-year offensive coordinator Luke Getsy prompted a Week 7 pivot toward more quarterback runs. That produced the most exciting part of Fields’ tenure. Two weeks later, he ran 15 times for 178 yards, a regular-season record for quarterbacks, against the Dolphins. The next week, he ran 13 times for 147 yards against the Lions.

Fields finished the year 64 yards shy of breaking Lamar Jackson’s single-season record of 1,206 rushing yards for a quarterback, set in 2019. The Bears sat Fields in Week 18 with a hip injury that he later described as feeling about 80%. They lost that game and landed the No. 1 pick.

Two consecutive Bears staffs have believed the best way to win was with a steady passing game. Fields never quite fit what they needed, even complaining early last year that coaching was making him play too much like a robot.

In his Bears career, Fields threw for more than 300 yards only once — in a loss to a Broncos team that had allowed 70 points the week before.

Can’t close it

Fields had a chance to change his narrative — and win the team’s first game in almost a year — when the Bears, down three in Week 2 this past season, inherited the ball at their own 7-yard line with 2:24 to play in Tampa. Fields took a shotgun snap and threw a screen pass into the arms of the Buccaneers’ Shaq Barrett, who returned it four yards for a touchdown.

For all the things working against Fields — two different coaching staffs and a subpar roster surrounding him — he had his opportunities to win games in the fourth quarter. But he rarely did.

Since 2021, 42 quarterbacks have run at least 50 plays with their team trailing with four minutes or less to play. Fields ranks last with a 41.1 passer rating. He has thrown the most interceptions, 10. His three touchdowns are tied for 21st.

No one ever questioned Fields’ work ethic or leadership. But a good quarterback rises to the occasion. Late in games, Fields didn’t.

At the NFL Scouting Combine last month, coach Matt Eberflus laid out what he wanted in a quarterback. It was notable that he detailed doing well in areas in which Fields has struggled.

“I’ve been looking at quarterbacks all my life, and I know what a good quarterback looks like,” Eberflus said. “What’s hard on a defense is a guy who has the ability to create, a guy who has the ability to throw with timing and accuracy and the guy who can move the ball down the field when it’s the critical moments.”

Now what?

With Fields gone, it’s the Bears’ job to put his successor — likely USC quarterback Caleb Williams — in a better position than he was in.

Signing running back D’Andre Swift, who was fifth in rushing last year, and trading for six-time Pro Bowl receiver Keenan Allen last week will give the rookie more surrounding talent than Fields ever had.

Across the ball, the Bears have paid up — they rank in the top half in spending at defensive line, linebacker and defensive back — to build a defense that could be their best since 2018.

Hiring an experienced play-caller in Shane Waldron — whose Seahawks teams ranked third in yards per touch while being tied for fewest giveaways in 2021-23 — will help the Bears avoid the pitfalls of a first-time coordinator. Former Panthers play-caller Thomas Brown, the Bears’ pass-game coordinator, is a deputy that previous staffs couldn’t claim.

The roster retooling that Fields had to suffer through has borne fruit, as the Bears have the seventh-most money in cap space and will pick first and ninth in the draft.

The Bears’ next quarterback promises no guarantee, but he’ll be set up better than Fields ever was.

NOTE: The Bears signed defensive tackle Byron Cowart to a one-year deal. The former fifth-round pick, who started 14 games for the Patriots in 2020, will provide depth.