So you’d like to be in Bears quarterback Justin Fields’ shoes for a moment?
First off, feel that immense burden on your back, like a few 80-pound gunny sacks of Idaho potatoes.
Next, say to yourself: ‘‘I’m carrying these spuds up that hill. I’ll show everybody. I can do it!’’
After that, well, sit down, focus the lamp, open a massive book and try to learn a foreign language as fast as you can.
If this sounds a little tough, sorry. Welcome to Fields’ cleats.
Fields, the Bears’ second-year quarterback from Ohio State, is carrying more expectations than one easily can imagine, likely more than any Bears player since Mitch Trubisky in 2017 and maybe more than anybody since Jim McMahon in 1982.
All those guys are/were quarterbacks, drafted high in the first round, with great expectations. McMahon was taken No. 5, Trubisky No. 2 and Fields No 11. All that was expected of each was to take the Bears to the promised land.
McMahon did it, winning Super Bowl XX. (After which he was almost constantly injured.) Trubisky failed. And now there’s Fields, with extra pressure on him because fans well recall then-general manager Ryan Pace risking the future on Trubisky five years ago and rolling a dud.
The Bears’ quarterback position is one of the most troubling ones in NFL history. Good Bears teams have been undermined by mediocre quarterback play seemingly forever. And when the quarterbacks were pretty good, they either got hurt or ran into problems that maybe no one could solve.
The largest of those problems is the franchise’s personality of being old-school, hidebound, pound-the-ball, ground-game-stunted, to the eternal detriment of the passing game.
Maybe great running backs — from ‘‘Bulldog’’ Turner to Bronko Nagurski to Gale Sayers to Walter Payton — have kept the Bears away from interest in the air game.
What Fields must turn around is not just the systemic reluctance of a franchise to throw the ball but also his own learning curve, which got walloped in his rookie season.
He played in 12 games last season and threw seven touchdown passes and 10 interceptions. Not good.
His running dazzled at times — 72 rushes for 420 yards, a 5.8-yard average — but only a few rare quarterbacks can survive rushing as their go-to ability.
Passing success is what is inside those potato sacks he lugs around. That he threw for only 1,870 yards last season might tell us more about his protection, receivers and coaching than anything. But the number lurks.
Indeed, the simple statistic of passing yards in a season is where the Bears fall off the charts. Consider that they never have had a 4,000-yard passer.
It’s incredible to think Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees have combined for 39 4,000-yard seasons among them. Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford has nine 4,000-yard seasons — including a 5,000-yarder — in the last 11 years.
My goodness, Josh Freeman once passed for 4,000 yards for the Buccaneers. So did Don (Boo, Packers!) Majkowski. Even ol’ Elvis Grbac of the Chiefs did it.
Guess what? Former Bears quarterback Jay Cutler did it, too — for the Broncos.
No, it’s a sad wall of franchise ineptitude, neglect and seeming fear of modern times that faces young Fields. Throw in the fact he is working with his third offensive coordinator, Luke Getsy, in three years going back to college, and you’ve got headaches.
A new offensive playbook in the NFL is like a giant novel in a different language, and getting a new offensive coordinator is like switching from meat foods to an insect-based diet. Or back again.
Getsy seems excited about educating Fields in his new lore.
‘‘He’s communicating with me so well now,’’ Getsy said Sunday. ‘‘These three or four months we’ve been together, it’s been a lot of fun.’’
Fields, by all indications, is a sincere, devoted student. But he was honest — and human — when he said a few weeks ago: ‘‘It would be easier if it was the same offense as last year and we were just able to grow on that.’’
Of course.
Perhaps the hardest part is un-learning the language and plays he had to memorize before. And don’t let it escape you that a quarterback is supposed to know the roles of all his offensive teammates. Yep, and every defensive player’s reaction to his guys’ moves.
Want to wear Fields shoes? Take some aspirin and call us in six months.
If you’re not babbling incoherently by then.
