Hamsters run inside wheels that go nowhere. Their pea-sized brains say, ‘‘Keep going, pal, you’ll get there eventually!’’
We’re not hamsters.
Yet the Bears have us on a hamster wheel to nowhere, dangling the hologram of a great quarterback in front of us like a shelled sunflower seed.
The Packers-Bears game Sunday was as depressing an opener as you could want. It was like lunging ahead for that seed and having your little teeth snap shut on vapor.
Talk about any part of the Bears’ 38-20 loss you want — the penalties, the porous defense, the bad blocking, the lousy coaching — but it all comes back to this: Justin Fields is not a great quarterback.
There has been enough time — two-plus seasons — to determine this.
He can run like the wind. He has a strong-enough arm. He’s resilient. He tries hard. He’s a good guy.
But is he great, the answer to the Bears’ endless search for the next Sid Luckman? Or even the next Jim McMahon? No.
Quarterbacks are everything in the NFL. Even hamsters know this.
It’s hard to extract a quarterback’s performance from the tangle of team elements around him. Nobody — not Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Lamar Jackson — could succeed with an offensive line that has him getting annihilated on every play.
The Bears’ O-line supposedly was ‘‘upgraded’’ during the offseason with the drafting of tackle Darnell Wright in the first round and the signing of free-agent guard Nate Davis.
But no matter. Fields had to run at times from blocking breakdowns, and he is, as mentioned, a stupendous runner. But quarterbacks must pass. That’s the NFL game.
Passing successfully is more than just throwing the ball. It’s analyzing defenses on the fly, knowing why things are happening, what tricks are being used against you, seeing possibilities in advance.
It’s a type of genius. We have no IQ test for it. If we did, it would be incredibly complex, involving physical and mental interactions, leadership skills, decision-making amid chaos and the ability to project the rules of physics and human nature into exploitable moments.
A microscopic fraction of men on this planet have what it takes. That genius. I’m afraid Fields does not have it.
His quarterback rating against the Packers was 78.2. His quarterback rating for his career is 79.6.
He is what we see. Indeed, his performance against the Packers was so depressing because it seemed like a rerun of an average tape from his 25 previous starts. He’ll go up and down, of course, but the average will win out. And it’s bad.
When the game still mattered, before the Packers shot ahead 38-14, Fields looked like a tailback somebody had put at quarterback. He is incredibly hard to grab in the backfield. He can spin and dodge and accelerate like a Pro Bowl running back. Indeed, he led the Bears in rushing with 59 yards on nine carries.
But he’s a quarterback. And this entire offseason, we expected him to develop as a drop-back passer, to use the weapons around him.
Those supposed great receivers DJ Moore and Chase Claypool? Did Fields even know they were on his team?
OK, he did. Between them, the two caught two passes for 25 yards. Wow.
And, remember, the Bears had the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft and traded it. They could have taken Bryce Young or C.J. Stroud, the quarterbacks who went No. 1 and No. 2 to the Panthers and Texans, respectively.
Neither Young nor Stroud lit it up in his debut Sunday, but maybe one or the other will be great in a year or two. But it won’t be with the Bears.
The Bears thought they had their franchise quarterback in Fields when they drafted him in 2021. They thought that when they took Mitch Trubisky with the No. 2 overall pick in 2017. To their eternal shame, they passed up a fellow named Patrick Mahomes that year.
What is the genius a great NFL quarterback needs? The closest simulation would be playing championship chess — and winning at it — while scurrying weasels nip at your legs and gunnysacks of potatoes are fired randomly across the room from hidden cannons.
You wonder how anybody could be good, let alone great, at that. But if they were, you can be pretty certain the Bears never would notice.
