Bears Trade Means Seismic Shift
Every game in the NFL has winners and losers, as do all the personnel moves.
The bigger the game, the bigger the roster move.
Caleb Williams might be the next big thing in Chicago, but the act of trading Justin Fields caused a huge jump in NFL seismographs. It was felt all around the league, even if the return from Pittsburgh in the deal was only a conditional sixth-round 2025 draft pick.
Here are the winners and losers from the Justin Fields trade.
Winners
Justin Fields
At this point, he needed to be away from Halas Hall and Chicago to get away from the vitriol of a split fan base more than anything else. He told Chicago media as a rookie he had always liked Cam Newton's game but more recently in his college career had paid more attention to Russell Wilson's. Now he'll get a chance to see close up the 36-year-old QB he felt he emulated. It's a chance to reboot his career and learn how to improve his own game while behind behind someone he respected. The other part to this is financial. It had become obvious Fields wasn't getting his fifth-year option picked up by the Bears. He'll now be able to stay in Pittsburgh one year or become a free agent and plot out his own destiny and go to the highest bidder. There will be no factors involved, like teams playing shell games or trying to lowball his team. Fields will get what the market honestly will pay him after the 2024 season. He'll be 26 going into 2025 and will hit the market. He might even end up back in the NFC North with Minnesota or as backup in Detroit or Green Bay. Who knows?
Matt Eberflus
Do you think they're going to trade away the starting quarterback, give him a rookie to start on opening day and bring in another veteran wide receiver with a new offensive coaching staff only to let him go at the end of the 2024 season? If the effective Bears defense Eberflus crafted last year has issues or injury problems and collapses and an offense led by a rookie shows inconsistency, like most offenses led by rookies do, then perhaps Eberflus does see his regime come tumbling down. However, the defense showed enough last year for the Bears to give their coach the benefit of doubt and the extra burden of a rookie quarterback should give Eberflus an even stronger position should there be questions about keeping him in place. Basically, Eberflus was bought an extra year by Poles with this trade. They're going to avoid at all costs the one year mistakes with coach and QB made with John Fox and Mitchell Trubisky and Fields with Matt Nagy.
DJ Moore, Keenan Allen
Both are open right now. They run routes in ways to be open on virtually every play. Fields was always hesitant to throw, often pulled it down when someone came free on a route late, and would then run it. Moore might have wanted Fields to stay in Chicago after a career-best receiving year but the Fields who the Bears saw the past three years couldn't have gone through a progression to find both of these receivers, as well as Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett sufficiently. In the future, it might change for Fields but he wasn't getting the ball out fast enough. Fields' average of 3.23 seconds to get the ball out last year was last in the league according to NFL NextGen Stats.
Bears Offensive Line
The sack rate said it all. Sure, there are times when pass blocking completely breaks down at the start. But Fields never had a sack rate less than the 10.6% this year. He had the worst sack percentage in the NFL his first two seasons and this past season was better only than Zach Wilson and Ryan Tannehill. Normally you could look at that figure and say they need better pass blocking but they were running the ball better than any team in the league over the last two years and using an extensive amount of play-action or RPO action. Play-action freezes a defense, yet Fields was being sacked an inordinate amount of times. This is because he held the ball too long. What happened when Fields wasn't playing and Tyson Bagent, an undrafted Division II rookie, was playing? The sack percentage came down to 3.4% for his 4 1/2 games. That was lower than any NFL starter in 2023. It's safe to say the offensive line will benefit, but the new quarterback will make a difference here. Williams isn't exactly known for getting the ball out fast, either.
Shane Waldron
The dream for all offensive coordinators is to pick their own QB or get one as a rookie to meld with their offense. Waldron made the best of a bad situation in Seattle with Geno Smith and for one season with a fading Russell Wilson. Now he'll get a chance to give input on which QB is best for his offense. Maybe it's Williams, maybe not. Either way, he's going to get the chance to take a top college QB and build an attack around him from the ground floor.
Caleb Williams
He's being handed the keys to the car and it looks like a Porsche 911 Turbo. How many rookies have the backing of a defense capable of top 10 if not higher, two veteran, polished wide receivers and a pair of proven tight ends. Usually they come into a situation like Bryce Young had last year. And he doesn't even have to go through a bridge quarterback starting first because the Bears don't have one of those. The only way it could be better for Williams is if he had an offensive head coach.
Pittsburgh Steelers
You don't often get a backup quarterback with 38 career starts and the ability to come in and ignite a team through both the run and pass as backup for only $3.2 million against the salary cap. Even if Fields doesn't play, it's worth the investment. If they've seen Russell Wilson play in the past two years, they have to expect Fields will play.
Chicago Fans
There's no longer a need for bickering and fighting among themselves over Fields. They're also going to get a dose of NFL offense the way it should look and might be surprised when their team eventually gets a QB with 4,000 yards passing for the first time in history. First, though, they need a quarterback to get 3,000 yards passing, which Fields never accomplished.
Bears Defensive Opponents
Fields wasn't effective at winning games but preparing to face a quarterback who might be his own best running back is no easy task. Physically, it's a tough situation for defenses. They'll now see a more conventional Bears QB, although if it's Williams he might make it tough on defenses by buying time with his feet before throwing, much the way Aaron Rodgers used to do before his political career as a vice-presidential candidate. Then it becomes a really tough situation for opponents.
Losers
Ryan Poles
He badly misplayed his hand in a game of poker with experienced NFL people. At least it would seem this way.
As more of the truth comes out in coming weeks from other teams with front office types who like talking a lot, we may learn the Bears had chances to trade Fields early for more early on in the process but balked. Poles never should have said a thing about doing right by Fields when he was at the combine, or mentioning how he didn't want Fields to live in the gray. It rang the dinner bell for the NFL's vultures. They were letting him keep Fields until there was virtually no asking price.
Russell Wilson
Fields wins fans quite easily and is a dynamic, young force. It's easy for Mike Tomlin to decide to bench Wilson considering he only is costing the team $1.2 million this year. It's extremely easy to bench Wilson when the backup is someone as exciting as Fields, even if he also can be a danger to the offense as someone who makes mistakes and takes too long to throw. When a team is at a point where it must resort to playing the backup, that danger is always worth the risk. Wilson better produce.
TV Networks
ESPN and NFL Network like the highlight players, guys who produce big, exciting plays. The QB who does the mundane and wins is their worst possible is their enemy. Fields became a darling of the highlight crowd even while the Bears rotted at the bottom of the NFC North.
Fantasy Football Owners
If Fields truly is going to be a backup in 2024 at Pittsburgh, fantasy football loses a key contributor. He was a top-10 quarterback in fantasy football only. In real football, Fields didn't get wins so he ranked between 20 and 32 throughout his time in Chicago.
Fans Who Bought No. 1 Jerseys
They only got three years worth of wear out of the No. 1 jerseys they ran out and bought. Those things are expensive. Practically everyone at Bears games was wearing No. 1. Now it's going to be No. 13.
Maybe they could tack a "3" on after the "1" and change the name on the top of the jersey.
There's a business for someone to start up. In Chicago, they would make a fortune: fan jersey recycling.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
