The thud you heard across the Chicago area Monday night was Bears fans dropping their remote controls onto their couch at the end of the Seahawks-Eagles game and wondering why their quarterback — who can do a lot of rare things — couldn’t do that.
Seahawks quarterback Drew Lock, making his second start since the end of the 2021 season Monday, took possession at his own 8-yard line with 1:52 to play and trailing by four. Nine plays later, he threw a 29-yard strike to rookie Jaxon Smith-Njigba to take the lead and eventually beat the defending NFC champs.
Lock has one fourth-quarter comeback victory this year. So does Joe Flacco, who rallied the Browns to beat the Bears on Sunday.
That’s as many as Bears quarterback Justin Fields.
NFL games come down to gotta-have-it situations. Fields and the Bears have been the worst in the league at them.
When trailing with four minutes or less to play, Fields’ passer rating this year is 22.1. He’s last among the 26 quarterbacks who have thrown 20 passes in that situation — the next-closest, the Colts’ Gardner Minshew, has a 42.4. The Bills’ Josh Allen leads the NFL with a 140.8.
No one has thrown more interceptions than Fields’ four in that situation. Only six have thrown for fewer yards.
For a team that stresses situational football in practice, that’s damning of Fields, coordinator Luke Getsy and coach Matt Eberflus. And it’s not just a one-year problem: last season, Fields’ 37.1 passer rating when trailing with four minutes or less to play ranked 24th out of 25 qualifying quarterbacks.
“It’s never going to be as good as you want it to be because we strive for perfection,” Fields said this week. “But how many times are you going to get to perfection? Hmmmm. Probably never. So we always try to be better in everything we do.”
The Bears have a long way to go to even be average.
The hope that driving to beat the Vikings in Week 12 would unlock late-game magic going forward fizzled out Sunday when the Bears, down three, started a drive at their 25 with 32 seconds left. Fields completed one of five passes, a 30-yarder to Tyler Scott up the right sideline that Getsy said should have gained 35. The official ruled he stepped out of bounds when he didn’t, Getsy said.
Getsy, though, said he didn’t see a through-line about the Bears’ season-long struggles.
“I think they are all different, right?” he said Thursday. “You take Tampa we were backed up and had the interception. You go to Denver and we were moving the ball well and we had the big penalty that moved us back and then the interception. I thought this one, the guys did a really good job of building off what we had done. We had to get big chunks because we didn’t have the timeouts available to us anymore.”
That’s hardly consoling.
Fields has one game-winning drive this season, driving the Bears to beat the Vikings with a field goal. Twenty-one quarterbacks have more. Jalen Hurts, Russell Wilson and Desmond Ridder are tied for the lead with four, but such forgettable quarterbacks as Zach Wilson, Jake Browning, Tommy DeVito and P.J. Walker all have two. Browning, DeVito and Walker have combined to start 11 games this season — Fields has 10.
Fields’ struggles start earlier in the fourth quarter. His 55.3 passer rating in the fourth quarter ranks 48th among all quarterbacks with at least 10 passes. Only two players have thrown more fourth-quarter interceptions than his five.
“When you do it right, what are you doing there? You’re taking care of the football, you’re converting on third and fourth downs and you’re handling the situations and finishing with the ball in your hand,” Eberflus said. “That’s the critical moments.”
