Like any good Bears fan, I completely forgot Foles existed.
Most of my Bears fans buddies are willing to call him a bust now, after just 2 games into this season. The rational part of them knows to be more patient, but when it’s this bad, its hard. The Bears could just give up on trying to protect him by keeping him in the pocket, and just let him be the bad passer/good runner that he was last year. It’d be less painful to watch, at least.
One problem is the Cardinals seem intent to win the Fail-eb for Caleb race, so theyll have competition.
They clearly got a stern talking to in the locker room at halftime.
The problem is that he has so little time to pass. I watched the Packer game. It seemed as if Jordan Love had plenty of time to throw. He had great protection, which means he had an excellent view of the entire field. Fields, on the other hand, was harassed unmercifully. On one play in the Tampa Bay game, he took the snap, moved backwards to fake a hand-off and, the instant he turned towards the line of scrimmage, was slammed to the ground.
This pressure results in very close pass coverage because the defensive secondary knows that the Bear receivers don’t have time to run multi move patterns because Fields has no time to wait. I’m most disappointed thus far this season with the lack of offensive line improvement. It seems as bad as last year.
While protection is an issue, a lot of the sacks/pressures come from Fields holding the ball too long too. He’s top 5 in time to throw stats (indicating how long the QB holds the ball before passing). And ESPN indicates that the Bears have a pass block win rate of 61%, which is 14th in the NFL, and well above bad offensive lines like the Bengals and Jets. Of course not all the blame is on Fields for that, but he seems to either not trust his reads, not trust his WR to get separation, or just not see the whole field. And it’s a problem he has had his entire career.
I watched Russell Wilson do that for a decade. While Seattle didn’t have the greatest offensive line (in fact, it was often one of their biggest weaknesses if not the biggest one) he had a tendency to try to extend plays too long. Now, Russ was elusive and could turn lemons into lemonade, so sometimes as maddening as it was (and he was sacked a lot) it also made for some interesting plays that worked and were fun to watch. I haven’t seen Fields that much, does he have that quality too?
From the few games I’ve watched, no, he doesn’t. Wilson was able to do that because he kept his eyes downfield looking to make a pass, and he had great pocket presence to avoid rushers. I’ve not seen either of those skills with Fields much. Last year, he’d make his first read, if it wasn’t wide open, he’d look for running lanes and take off. This year, he seems to be trying to give his guys time to get open, but either he doesn’t pull the trigger, or his guys can’t get enough separation to make Fields throw the ball.
It does not bode well when your QB decides that his coaches aren’t helping him and he just needs to go back to playing street ball. I’m not sure Fields wants to actually become a passing QB, and he certainly doesn’t appear to have learned/developed much as one.
The story seems to be overblown, because both the coaches and Fields seem to be on the same page. But I think it reflects poorly on Field’s development as a passer that he seems ready to trash the work put into his passing and just get back to running and playing Manzielball.
There is such a thing as over-coaching. In fact I’ve been discussing this with my football talk people all season so far. Tim Jenkins (QB expert) was analyzing his play so far and noticed that they’ve changed his back foot on shotgun snaps from left foot back, which he has always done and is more traditional, to right foot back. One thing this has caused, according to Tim, is that his timing is a little off with his progressions with right foot back. He is getting through them a little too fast, so what looks covered to him, would be open in another half second, but by then he’s moved on to his next progression. Jenkins said it was very strange for this staff to change his footwork while also adding more players and new schemes all at once and might have overwhelmed him. You can see him hesitate in the pocket when last year he would have taken off and tried to run for a first down. The Tampa coach also stated he was shocked that they didn’t run Fields at all, when they prepared for a dynamic, athletic Fields, but the game plan made him one dimensional.
To be clear, he has certainly not played well so far, but it sure doesn’t look like he’s been put in the best position to succeed either.
From my (and most people’s) point of view, the Bears have no legitimate shot to compete for the playoffs this year. What really matters, besides getting reps for your young players and seeing where you on the team you need help (hint: your lines suck), is finding out if Fields can develop as a passer. He is not going to develop at all if he just goes back to what he did last year. Sure it’s more fun to watch and makes the fans feel better about the guy, but it doesn’t win games and it doesn’t help him develop as a passer. So the team needs to figure out if Fields will ever be able to succeed as a passer in this league. If they don’t think he can, by all means go back to last year and run him into the ground and use your top 5 pick on a QB. If you think there is even a chance for him to develop as a passer, then he needs to learn and practice those skills/techniques/ways of thinking that will help him develop. What he seemed to say in his pressers was that, so far, developing as a passer is really hard for him. Which it is. But unless he sticks with it, he’ll never be more than Colin Kaepernick.
I agree he’s having difficulty figuring out how to handle the way defenses are playing us this year, and I hope he starts figuring stuff out. He’s got next year and an option year left and he’s a first round pick. I’d hate to give up on him already when we’ve seen he has otherworldly athleticism, and he does have an arm that can make all the throws and he did make a lot of good throws last year. Not enough, clearly, but like you said, we have no shot at the playoffs, or even .500 it seems at this point, so let’s see how it plays out.
Also, what is the record on quarterback development for Luke Getsy (Rogers didn’t need development), Matt Eberflus, Ryan Poles (Mahomes doesn’t count, assistant GMs don’t have much to do with it), and the Bears Organization as a whole. Can you name one successful QB developed by anyone on this list? In my view, everyone has been bad on this and needs to improve, all the way up the chain.
“That Clark Kent fella from Kansas, he really did well, you can credit the coaches for that.”
I posted a bit of a rant on Fields and the Bears offense in the week 3 thread if anyone was interested. I’ll expand a little here.
I’m pretty much out on Fields. He’s cooked. Like was said upthread, if a QB is going to make it, you’ll see something definitive by year 3. Especially if he’s gotten a fair number of starts over that time. Talent ultimately wins out. I don’t put much stock in the idea that a QB can be ruined, more likely he just wasn’t good enough. When a QB’s coaching is bad it usually is a symbiotic thing, coaching looks bad when a QB can’t execute. When a QB takes a ton of sacks it due to a bad line, but also because they don’t speed up their clock to account for it. We can list dozens of good to great QBs who had stretches in their careers with poor blocking and questionable game plans who still managed to produce at some level. Perhaps they weren’t maximized, but circumstances don’t generally turn a potential star into a total pile of shit.
I’d like to blame the GM, OC and OL here, but I really can’t. I mentioned in the Week 3 thread, and others mentioned up thread, but there’s a bunch of great expert film studies out there on YouTube and Patreon these days. They break down every snap and discuss the scheme, the blocking, the routes and the QB’s decision and throws. Fields has gotten a TON of attention over 2 games and the problem is like 75% him.
When you watch the breakdown there are certainly plays where the OL doesn’t give him a chance at all. Our OL gets fooled on stunts and games and their technique sometimes creates a really porous pocket. Fields is definitely getting hit too much and he’s constantly hearing footsteps. But that’s not on every play. The reality is that Fields is doing everything wrong that a QB can do wrong.
The offensive scheme actually seems to be working quite well. We have a couple WRs out there that are completely lost on some plays, but we STILL are getting guys wide open. The plays are there to be made. Fields somehow isn’t seeing guys who are free due to a busted assignment. He’s not anticipating that a WR will be breaking into a vacant zone. He’s staring down his primary target and not manipulating the safety with his eyes. He’s holding the ball way too long and running himself into sacks when there’s no pressure. He’s air mailing throws on checkdowns. He’s missing downfield targets by 5 yards, how many times have we need a DB get pegged in the back? That’s Fields missing.
Lots of frustration with Getsy’s play calling from the fans, but honestly, I think he’s just grasping at straws. Trying to find anything at all that Fields can execute. This is why he’s running so many screens, no chance of Fields missing the read, no progression to go through, low chance of him dirting the throw.
We have this weird pattern where the scripted first drive tends to be the Bears very best series. This happened last season and has continued this season. We tend to be really productive on the opening drive, but once the defense adjusts or we start running plays we’ve rehearsed less, the effectiveness goes way down. I suspect that we practice that opening series all week and Justin memorizes the progression and the reads. The WRs know the routes. We’re on point. But then later in the game when we start picking situational plays or running plays from less familiar formations and personnel, Fields just seems to act lost.
So yeah, unless something really dramatic changes, I think Fields is cooked. I hope we get Bagent out there and see if he has anything to offer.
So, yeah.
Getsy changed his footwork as soon as he got here. He was using “new” footwork all last year.
I’m just basing that off of what Jenkins said in this clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIkyB0gd10A
Unfortunately, the improvement seen in the second half of last year is non-existent due to play calling. Justin is being shoe-horned into being a pocket passer. They need to find his best pocket passes, do more RPOs, more rollouts and designed runs, like late last year.
Also concerning is last years second half season Bears were feisty and fighting. The first two games this year are not guys exhibiting Eberflus’ H.I.T.S. philosophy and it turning to X.X.X.X.
His “footwork” is non-existent. Sadly, those links you shared are the standard camp fluff pieces. Pretty much none of that shows up on the tape.
This is interesting because he didn’t bring any of this footwork/timing stuff up during his regular week 2 breakdown. Perhaps he covered it in his full Patreon video, or else he came up with it later as content for these radio hits. I think this QB School video (90 minutes!) tells the more complete story.
The sad fact that I see is that Fields doesn’t actually have any type of standard drop back. He just sort of bounces and floats. There’s no urgency with his drops and he ends up at different depths (which makes the protection less predictable) and he tends to drift one way or another, his feet are never really set when he’s ready to throw which slows his delivery. JT at QB School really hammers this. For most drops you can’t really tell if it’s a 3 or 5 or 7 step drop since there’s no discernable “steps” in the entire movement.
While I think Jenkins has a point about them wanting him to drop back like Rodgers being dumb. And mucking around with his drop back while trying to teach him a new playbook and new wideouts might be counterproductive (though I think a pro QB should be able to talk and chew gum). His foot work definitely sucks, so either you live with it, or you fix it. Because his footwork is so sloppy and inconsistent, Jenkin’s suggestion that he’s missing reads entirely because the timing is out of sync is frankly tough to swallow. If he put his other foot back, he’d still be floating and bouncing, so the timing will still be shit.
It’s fashionable to pin this all on coaching right now and I wonder if Jenkins is just jumping on the bandwagon. All that said, Getsy had one season as a full time QB coach (with an experienced Rodgers) and our QB coach had exactly one previous season of experience as a QB coach (with the experienced Cousins). So it’s not like anyone on this staff has any serious experience developing a QB, let alone a non-traditional one like Fields.
I’m not pinning it all on the coaches, I’m just not letting them off the hook. As I said before, everybody has been bad so far. The defense included. Especially the d-line. I’m basically at the paper bag over my head stage with this team, but I’ll still be watching through the eye holes.
Agreed, everyone owns this mess. That said, unlike the Mitch seasons, we have WRs getting open regularly and with separation. The OL isn’t good, but there’s a lot of snaps where he has ample time. Some things are working, QB is where all the short circuits seem to be. Whether Fields is incapable or if he’s just being yanked around too much all land us in the same spot, the field general is a turd.