If it wasn’t clear enough after Sunday’s 41-10 loss that quarterback Justin Fields needs to improve his passing, consider this: general manager Ryan Poles said it before the Bears even kicked off against the Lions.
“He’s shown ability to make a ton of plays with his legs,” he told the team’s official pregame show on WBBM-AM. “No one questions his playmaking ability, but really growing as a passer is going to be the next step.”
That step will have to wait until next year. Fields had his typical dynamic runs Sunday, but his worst passing showing since Week 3. Here’s a look at both:
The pick
With about three minutes to play in the first half, Fields fumbled when hit from behind by Lions rookie defensive end James Houston. It never should have gotten to that point. Fields took the shotgun snap and looked left, where receiver Dante Pettis was running a corner route. He was open against Cover 2 defense, but Fields pump-faked, slipped a tackler, shuffled right and ran up the right hash. Carrying the ball with only one hand, he was blindsided by Houston and fumbled. Defensive end Aidan Hutchinson recovered it.
“As he entered the line of scrimmage there, he’s going to get into a runner protection of the ball at that point,” Eberflus said. “He has to do that. He only had one hand on the ball at that time and he got it stripped.”
His second turnover came at the end of the half. When the Bears lined up at the Lions’ 45 with seven seconds left, the Lions rushed no one.
Hutchinson stood alongside the right sideline, helping the Lions to make a wall to prevent the Bears, who were out of timeouts, from getting out of bounds to try a field goal. In addition to man coverage outside, the Lions had two deep defenders and someone lurking the middle.
Fields threw to Pringle, crossing from left to right, and was picked off by Hutchinson.
“I should have just thrown the ball away,” Fields said. “I don’t know why I did that, but you live and you learn, and just keep getting better.”
The Bears said they would have played a similar defense in that situation, but their offensive players were still surprised by what they saw.
“I thought [Hutchinson] came from off the sideline, honestly,” Pringle said.
The pitch
Two-and-a-half minutes into the game, the Bears faced third-and-one at their own 49. With Fields in the shotgun, tight end Cole Kmet went in motion and settled under center. When he did the same in the Bears’ 35-32 loss to the Dolphins on Nov. 6, he ran a sneak.
This time, though, he took the snap and pitched left to Fields, who was now a halfback.
Fields stumbled around left tackle Braxton Jones as he and a defender tumbled to the ground at the Bears’ 46 — “I was just trying to stay up,” he said — but wasn’t touched as he ran up the left sideline. Safety Kerby Joseph dragged him down after a gain of 31.
“I knew that play was going to be a good play,” Fields said. “Of course, we ran that QB sneak with Cole a few weeks ago, so we’ve been practicing that play for about two, three weeks now, and finally got it off the play-call sheet. So it was good play-calling, good execution.”
Kmet said that offensive coordinator Luke Getsy “wanted to have some fun with it — and it worked out pretty well.”
The scramble
The plan was for Kmet to run a choice route on third-and-four with 5:20 to play in the first quarter. The tight end would read the defense’s leverage and run away from it to get open.
Kmet broke off the line and ran a slant, then pivoted and broke toward the right sideline. The Lions were in Cover 3, though, which made the route “not really great,” Fields said.
Pringle, who was split right, crossed underneath, opening up the middle of the field. Fields took off between the hashmarks, outrunning Hutchinson, who had rushed from the quarterback’s left. By the time Fields reached Lions’ 40, the five players nearest him were Lions. He zoomed past them.
“I just saw a crease right there, and just hit it and got a big gain,” Fields said.
No one came close to touching him, though, until Joseph tore him down seven yards shy of the end zone.
“Here’s the hard thing with playing a guy like Fields,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “Man, he — if you just — you just come barreling off the edge and you’re out of control then he’s gone. So, then you have to be able to bring a little bit of force and close the pocket in on him.”
Fields’ dazzling runs have become so commonplace this season that it’s easy to forget how rare they are in team history. Fields has three 60-plus-yard runs this season — the same number of such runs by every other Bears player since the end of the 2010 season.
Fields has four runs of 55 yards or more this season; in the entire Matt Nagy era, from 2018-2021, the Bears had three.
