What hyperbole? He did something last night he’d never done before. Had he come close? Yes. But last night was the first time the Bears under Fields have actually won a game in which they trailed in the 4th quarter.
That’s not the way you stated it. “The Bears” winning isn’t something that “he” does. The team does that. He has led a late game drive to take the lead before, the defense failed to hold it. The Bears failed to win, not Fields. Mooney failed to catch the winning pass, not Fields. Fields drove us down and did everything he needed to for us to win the game. His receiver screwed it up.
The hyperbole is stating that he’s never succeeded in a late game situation. He did, the team didn’t until last night. Wins are a team stat, not a QB stat. That isn’t saying that the QB has nothing to do with wins or losses, of course, but when your team is undergoing a tear it to the studs rebuild and actively trying to lose, you cannot blame the QB for all of those losses.
Whether you credit Fields specifically or the offense in general, I have to say that they were very competent at the end. Drove down the field into the red zone, forced the Vikings to use up their timeouts then ran the clock down, and set things up for a very easy field goal and pretty much no chance for the Vikings to respond. They could have tried to get a bigger lead with shots at the end zone but they saw the chance for an easy, conservative win and they took it, even kneeling when appropriate.
In general the game was a fiasco but the very end was a well-executed game manager situation, and it gave them the win.
Where did I say “he’s never succeeded in a late game situation”? What facts do I have wrong?
You don’t have to tell me the Bears are a bad team, and that they as a team have lost games in which Fields played well enough to win. But leading a 4th quarter comeback to win is an important milestone for a QB. The great ones do it routinely, and even average QBs like Jared Goff (as in last week) pull it off. Fields had never done it. Now he has. It’s big for him and big for the team.
What’s wrong is saying he’s never led the team on a successful 4th quarter drive in a clutch situation. He has been successful doing that before, but his teammates screwed it up. You said it yourself:
“resulted in the winning field goal” - The kicker is not Justin Fields. The FG either going in or being missed had nothing to do with Justin. He led a successful drive putting us in a position to win. He has done that before as I mentioned. The team managed to actually win in this situation, but this is not the first time Justin led us successfully on a late game drive to put us in a position to win.
Again, yes he has. That the team has let him down more than once after putting us in position to win is not on Justin. He can’t play defense or kick field goals.
I agree with this. It’s big that we managed to hold on to a win. It’s big that he made that drive after his two big mistakes. You can’t develop a winning culture without learning how to win. It was a big win for the team. However, it was not the first time Justin was successful doing his job in a late game situation.
Which I never said. I said:
Which is absolutely true. I know he doesn’t kick field goals or play defense. I also know that the team with the higher score when the clock says 0:00 wins the game, and by that metric last night was the first time Fields had successfully quarterbacked a professional team to a victory in a game where they trailed in the 4th quarter.
I fully admit that I’m being pedantic about this point, but there is so much criticism of Fields these days that I think it’s important to be accurate. He certainly has things to prove to earn this job going forward into the future, but I don’t think it’s fair to take away times he has been successful.
ETA: Yes a “team victory” resulted from his successful late 4th quarter drive, whereas in his previous successful late 4th quarter drives the team failed to take advantage and clinch the win in spite of Justin successfully doing his job.
It’s a very controversial topic when analyzing football to determine whether or not wins is an important statistic for a quarterback.
Certainly, if there is one position that has a greater influence on winning than any other, it’s the QB. But a QB can’t win on his own, not even close. Everybody around him has to do his job.
It’s often said that a great QB makes everyone around him better, and okay, there might be some truth to it. Though I don’t know how much influence he has over kickers or the defense, aside from making a kick easier by getting closer to the goal, or making things easier on the defense by making drives longer and giving them a longer break between the opponent’s drives. It really is a team sport.
But just know that this debate is a big one in sports, you see it and hear it all the time. There’s no easy answer.
You really are, because the following is simply a statement of fact:
This is an actual stat that the NFL tracks. Your (to @Airbeck) “he did his job but the rest of the team didn’t” version of the stat is not.
Is there a rule in this thread that we can only discuss official NFL stats, and not what we actually see on the field?
I thought the point of this thread was to evaluate Justin Fields and whether the Bears should stick with him long term. Him doing his job successfully in late game situations seems to be an important consideration in that evaluation. Ignoring times that he did that successfully just because someone else on the team screwed up seems unfair and counterproductive to a proper evaluation.
You have posted quite a few words arguing against an official NFL stat in a way that makes it seem that you are completely unaware of the existence of that stat. I’m letting you know that it’s a real thing.
I’m not arguing against or unaware of that stat, I just hope to god our GM is using more than just that particular stat to evaluate Justin in clutch situations. Especially a stat that depends so heavily on the rest of the team doing their part.
A little outside perspective.
Game-winning throw. Game-winning drive. Redemption. Check, check, check.
One drive for a lousy field goal based almost entirely on one throw to a wide open Moore that almost any NFL QB could make, and it’s redemption? These hot takes are idiotic.
I’d probably agree if my team had also enjoyed 30 years of Hall of Fame-level QB play. The bar’s just a tiny bit lower for Bears fans. 
Also, the article’s a lot more balanced. I just quoted the rah-rah part.
Well he gets criticized for not throwing to wide open receivers, and now he gets criticized for throwing to a wide open receiver. I don’t see how any QB could ever succeed in this town. Chicago is where QBs go to die.
I wasn’t criticizing him. He made the pass he needed to make. My only points were that it was not a special throw, and that boiling down your decision on whether a QB is “redeemed” or not based on one drive/one win is the typical stupid “hot take”.
Fields as a QB has a wider range of outcomes than most 4th year QBs. He’s got a solid floor as a runner, and he’s had games/quarters that show he can be excellent. But he’s also got games where he struggles with reading defenses and adjusting and just doesn’t look like an NFL QB.
He’s a 3rd year QB. 2nd in this “system”, if you call what Luke Getsy does a system.
But I agree, this one drive does not redeem or solve much in regard to the decisions the team has to make regarding the QB position and the draft coming up. Its a good result, and I’m glad we got the win, but it certainly does not decide anything on its own.
Well well well.
With yesterday’s dominant win over Detroit, the Bears are out of the laughingstock category and look like the team I expected them to be at the beginning of the season.
But Fields? He was frequently spectacular, but still took terrible sacks and missed wide open receivers. (At least he was turnover-free.) His processing and accuracy are still questionable. With four games left, I’m personally no closer to a definitive answer about his future than I was when I launched the poll in August.
For a few days, though, I’m going to stop worrying about next year and just enjoy the feeling of stomping the Lions.
Every quarterback in every game does the same type of things to a greater or lesser extent because that is the nature of the game. His overall performance was excellent. In fact, he looked better to me than Mahomes, and Mahomes is considered the league’s best quarterback.