Late Unflagged Hit Infuriates Bears
The Bears are fed up with Justin Fields being hit late on plays ... again.
Every year it seems to crop up but more and more Fields takes shots when he's sliding or out of bounds and officials let it go.
It happened on the first Fields run of Sunday's 28-13 win over the Detroit Lions, as he slid and Lions linebacker Jack Campbell made contact with him without a flag.
"If it was us, they'd be throwing it," Bears safety Jaquan Brisker said. "There wouldn't even be a reaction. They would just throw it.
"So I think they should just treat him fair. He is a quarterback. Now I know he's 230 nd he's running a 4.3 (second 40-yard dash) so, but it doesn't really matter. He's still a quarterback and we have to protect him."
It happened with Fields in the Vikings game. Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone is another who has been accused of this sort of thing. Anzalone on Sunday had a penalized hit out of bounds but it was on DJ Moore.
"It's disappointing," Brisker said. "Obviously the other team is being told to do dirty stuff after the play, hit him like this a certain way. It's obvious they've been told just by the way they've been treating him the last couple of weeks—a lot of shots to the head. It's very disappointing seeing a guy like that get hit, take hits like that and one of those hits, you know, God forbid could be something that's very bad.
"So I think the league needs to get on that and notice that it's bad."
Brisker didn't cite specific instances, just generalities, when accusing other teams of plotting to take out Fields. One of the worst instances of this came against Pittsburgh in Fields' rookie year, when several hits on him in the pocket and otherwise, were ignored and the Bears got flagged by former official Tony Corrente's crew for similar hits on Ben Roethlisberger.
Another classic game in this regard was Fields' very first start at the plaee he's playing Sunday, in Cleveland against the Browns. He took some several big, late hits that were unflagged.
Brisker says these are part of the opposition's strategy.
"You could just tell like the way they just hit him after the play, you can just tell how they're just trying to tug and try to do whatever they can to get him out of the game," Brisker said. "It's obvious, It's obvious.
"All them head shots yesterday, all them late hits, trying to mess with his hands and things like that. It's obvious. So the league just has to protect the quarteraback and we're going to protect ours at all times."
Bears coach Matt Eberflus often will occasionally submit video to the league about plays in games. The first hit Fields took will no doubt be among them.
Sometimes they lead to fines. In the past they've even led to apologies by the league.
Eberflus said he gets after the officials in games, too.
"I'm very active on that," Eberflus said. "I'm always in their ear about that because protecting the quarterbacks in this league is big. Those guys are the league, so it's important that we do that and we continue to do that.
"If you have a guy that's a runner and he slides down like that, we've gotta protect him. I wasn't happy about that first one and I let him know about it. It's just not the right thing to do. We've just gotta make sure we take care of our quarterbacks."
Eberflus didn't cite other plays from Sunday besides the Campbell hit.
"I don't think so," he said. "The first (Lions) game, for sure. But not this one."
Fields emerged from the game without any reported injuries.
"I'm good body-wise," he said. "I think I could probably take some hits off my throwing the ball away or checking it down faster. All those sacks and pressures aren't on the O-line, stuff like that.
"I've just got to look at the film and see what I could have—where I could have gotten the ball out faster, thrown the ball away, boom, boom, boom, and just move on. I mean, yeah, it's football, so you're going to have games where you get sacked more than usual and you're going to have games where you don't get sacked at all."
And in some games you might get hit while sliding with no flag thrown.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
