Athletes find all kinds of motivation in all kinds of places. Much of the motivational material doesn’t fare well when held up to the light of truth or reality, but it doesn’t matter. Michael Jordan would interpret an opponent’s smile as five different insults, at least one of them some sort of blasphemy on his family, when, in fact, the smile was directed at a mustard-slathered hot dog dropped on a pair of pants in the stands. Woe to the smiler anyway.
The Bears open the season Sunday against San Francisco, which means that Justin Fields, their quarterback, will get a chance to face 49ers quarterback Trey Lance, who, if he were so inclined, could brag that he was taken eight spots higher in the 2021 draft. As far as I know, Lance has not bragged about that. Not that it matters to someone looking for inspiration.
Now, Fields has never told the media that his only goal at the moment is to prove to the 49ers that they made a terrible mistake by choosing Lance with the third overall pick and not the quarterback the Bears took with the 11th overall pick. But if you listen to Darnell Mooney, Fields’ favorite receiving target, the 49ers are marked men.
“He’s going to shine for sure,’’ Mooney said. “He’s going to blossom. He’s going to prove everything that everybody doubted him on — especially Week 1. That team passed on him. So, they’re going to have to pay a little bit for that.”
If I were Mooney, I would have thought for a minute or two before setting up the season opener as a Fields-vs.-Lance referendum. I would have thought about the fact that the 49ers have one of the best defenses in the NFL, that Fields doesn’t have much in the way of weapons on offense and that the 49ers’ tough running game means they won’t ask much of Lance.
That’s not to say Fields will surely struggle Sunday at Soldier Field. It’s to say he’ll be up against a lot. I’m not sure Lance will be up against a lot, other than the pressure of replacing veteran Jimmy Garropolo, who will be standing on the sideline as his backup.
“I think he’s in probably the best position you could be in as a first-year quarterback with a defense like us and a good O-line and a bunch of weapons,” 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa said of Lance. “He’s got all the help he needs. ... I think if he doesn’t make big mistakes, then we’re going to be in good shape.”
If I might ask an innocent question without getting hit with a barrage of Bears koozie-wrapped beer cans: Has Fields done enough yet to prove that the 49ers, or anybody else, made a mistake by not drafting him last year? Part of the problem is that the Bears were bad last season, going 6-11. Another part of the problem is that Fields’ rookie year looked and felt and smelled like a hard-knocks rookie year: Seven touchdown passes, 10 interceptions and a 73.2 rating. Was that a manifestation of a lack of talent around him and bad coaching? Sure, partly. But to pin all of his struggles on everybody and everything else would be a decent definition of blindness.
Nobody knows yet about the kid, but a lot of people think they do, especially when it comes to Sunday and Fields vs. Lance. That has something to do with pedigree. Fields was a star at Ohio State, a program filled with elite athletes whose main objective is a national championship every year. Lance? He threw just 318 passes while at North Dakota State, whose main objective every year is to stay warm. So the easy thing to do is to step back and say it’s not a competition but a coronation for Fields. Well, not so fast.
Fields was drafted by a bad team and played a lot his rookie year. Lance was drafted by a playoff team. He started two games to Fields’ 10 and finished the season with five touchdown passes and two interceptions. The two quarterbacks share a few attributes. Both are big and strong, have powerful arms and can run. Oh, and there’s one other similarity: Both have a lot to prove, believe it or not.
But if Fields is looking for signs of disrespect in Chicago to motivate him, he’ll need to send out a search party. Fans and media here seem united that he’s going to be a star. For motivation, he might want to go out of state, the way Mooney did to find a motivational needle in a haystack with Lance.
Two other quarterbacks, Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson, went 1-2, respectively, in last year’s draft. Woe to them, apparently, when Fields gets his shot to play against them, which, alas, won’t be this season.
So where can Fields go for motivation in the short term? In Week 2, the Bears travel to Green Bay to take on the Packers, raising the obvious question: That Aaron Rodgers guy – who does he think he is?
