Bear Digest

What Extra Work with Receivers Can Do

Patrick Mahomes engineered off-season work with his receivers and Justin Fields has tried to do it to an extent with some of those willing to participate.
Gene Chamberlain|
USA Today

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Chicago Bears

Every minicamp at Halas Hall ends with reporters wanting to know what the quarterback is going to do in the off-season as far as throwing to his receivers.

That is, every starting quarterback since Jay Cutler gets asked.

Would they be getting their timing down with receivers, particularly new ones? Mitchell Trubisky did this. Justin Fields did it last year to some extent, and this year, as well already.

What's the big deal? A few passes by the quarterback to his wide receivers or tight ends in the off-season can't make that much of a difference by the time training camp begins, let alone the start of the regular season. Can it?

Sports Illustrated's Conor Orr wrote a detailed account of what Patrick Mahomes did with his off-season away from Kansas City in 2022 and it might open some eyes, particularly because the Chiefs won the Super Bowl after they did it. 

Mahomes no longer had Tyreek Hill and now had JuJu Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Justin Watson as receivers he had to get to know. Orr's colleague Albert Breer also contributed some details to this description of what Mahomes organized.

What does all of this have to do with the Bears?

Fields has tried to organize something away from Halas Hall at various points with receivers, he has said. He and receivers who are in the Chicago area were getting together to do some work, anyway. Twitter had Fields, Darnell Mooney, Cole Kmet and DJ Moore at Maine South High School doing work on their own together. 

Earlier in the off-season Fields, Khalil Herbert and Velus Jones Jr. were doing off-season work together.

WHAT PATRICK MAHOMES DID IN HIS OFF-SEASON WITH RECEIVERS

At least it was something, even if it wasn't the elaborate workouts Mahomes organized with help from the Chiefs coaching staff.

Mahomes is hardly the first to do this sort of thing. In the 2020 summer before the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat Kansas City to win the Super Bowl, Tom Brady took charge like this in the off-season to get to know all of his offensive players and a new offense better. It worked.

So the Bears have several new targets for Fields, particularly Moore. And Moore was out there working.

The player not mentioned as being a big part of these sessions to date has been wide receiver Chase Claypool.

Of all the players who could stand to get to know Fields' throwing better besides Moore, it's Claypool. He was in Europe modeling clothing, then later helping with an American football camp for kids overseas.

The optics of Claypool going over to Europe for both of those purposes after he had missed the final three weeks of off-season work at Halas Hall with injuries that haven't yet been defined by the Bears are not good.

It doesn't mean Claypool is going to fail now or that he doesn't care, but as said, it simply doesn't look good to fans.

And let's face it, no matter how much work you do in a classroom or on film to get ready for the off-season, if you didn't know the offense well last year then the best way to learn it is by going through the reps on the field. Claypool didn't get to do that during most of OTAs and minicamp.

He at least was saying the right thing in an interview, telling talkSPORT 2 "It will be a night and day difference from last year!"

Fields, Moore, Kmet and Darnell Mooney, who has been out all off-season, took it upon themselves to put in the work.

"Probably mid-July I’m going to get the receivers, tight ends, running backs down to Florida, throw with them for a few days just right before we come back," Fields told media when he was departing for the summer. "Really just to get back on the same page, throwing routes with them, and just getting that chemistry up, on the field, off the field and stuff like that. I think that's one part as a team that we’ve grown is our chemistry off the field, too."

Mid-July is approaching.

The Bears have to be hopeful Claypool will be joining them when the group reunites as a prelude to camp. It isn't a Patrick Mahomes boot camp but at least it's something.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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