What Justin Fields Needs to Do Better

When Thursday's win over Carolina ended Bears coach Matt Eberflus was forthcoming with a least one tidbit of information about the quarterback situation and Justin Fields.

"When Justin is healthy, he'll be our starter, and we'll see where it goes," Eberflus said.

This much was known already anyway, or at least expected. At least it was good this was confirmed. No reasonable person could have expected Tyson Bagent had done enough to take away the starting quarterback job.

On Friday there was no more information about Fields' healing thumb, but this is hardly this silence speaking loudly about the future.

Instead, the silence is deafening about his future from GM Ryan Poles. There were no resounding votes of confidence for Fields about the future from anyone with the team even after he threw four touchdown passes in consecutive weeks.

Meanwhile, there is Caleb Williams as a draft possibility for the worst team in the league and the Bears just increased the chances Carolina would be that team. So the pick would belong to Chicago for the second straight year and QB is a great option.

At this point, you would have to assume they'll be watching Fields like hawks when he does return to see what they need to see to go forward because simply drafting another quarterback with the first pick and keeping Fields around to "compete" for the starting spot hardly seems a viable option, that is unless the quarterback they want to pick is a player who is not among the top two passers.

With Williams or North Carolina's Drake Maye, Fields would be too valuable in a trade to keep him around. To lose a rigged QB competition to someone else is only going to decrease his trade value. So they'd be getting rid of him.

So how exactly does Fields convince anyone at this point about being the starter of the future?

He's got seven games left to do it provided he's healthy enough to start playing again against Detroit.

Here are best guesses on what he'll need to show because no one will be forthcoming at Halas Hall with exactly what they need to see or even if they need to see anything to be convinced about Fields long term as a Bears starter.

Considering the offensive line now seems to have put together more consistency and could be entirely intact if Nate Davis returns against the Lions, and that Fields has a better receiver group than last year, improvement in the following ways should be expected.

1. Consistency

This is Fields' great weakness. He has never gone more than three straight games with passer ratings above 90.0 and only went three straight once. In fact, this year he had successive passer ratings of 132.7 against Denver and 125.3 against Washington, but in none of the other games was he even above 78.2.

He went more than three straight games with a completion percentage of 65% or better just once in his career, and that stretch was in 2022 against Atlanta, Green Bay, Philadelphia and Buffalo. Considering he did this in 2022 against a group of stronger opponents and with a splotchy receiver crew and porous offensive line, it seemed entirely possible at the time that he had truly attained a new level of consistency. However, this season began and he went 64.9%, then 55.17% and 50%. His season's completion percentage of 60.13 is something you might expect from a rookie.

2. Getting Rid of the Ball

Fields' sack percentage is 13.3% for his career and he's at 12.9% this year. The only starting quarterback with a higher sack percentage is Giants starter Daniel Jones.

So blame the Bears offensive line?

Tyson Bagent had the Bears offensive line in front of him and his sack percentage for four starts was 3.4% That's the best in the NFL, a tenth better than Patrick Mahomes and half a percentage point better than Josh Allen.

It's possible for such a discrepancy because Bagent has been getting rid of the ball faster than Fields. If he can't get the downfield completion, then he's quick to check down.

Fields is at 3.04 seconds to get rid of the ball according to Next Gen Stats. It's .08 better than last year but only DeShaun Watson has been slower (3.06) to get rid of it than Fields.

Of course, Fields isn't going to get rid of it as quickly as Bagent because sometimes he's taking off with it and hurting opponents with a big run. He just needs to get to that point when he's made the decision to run faster because he gets sacked too often deciding when and where to run. Or there are holding penalties called.

Bagent wasn't a lot faster than Fields. He was at 2.89 seconds. There were nine passers slower to get rid of it, yet he was sacked the lowest percentage in the league.

That's on Fields to get that number down because it sounds like the Bears offensive line was sufficiently effective keeping pass rushers away for Bagent.

Fields doesn't need to be close to where Bagent was for sack percentage because his gift of being a fast runner is going to cause him to hold it longer. But to be so far behind where Bagent was in terms of sack percentage when he has the speed to get away or could throw it away like Bagent only reflects total negligence on Fields' part.

3. Win

There's a line of thinking that wins are not a quarterback's statistic. It's not like baseball with a pitcher.

Oh, but it is. You can put up all the stats you want but without the win it means nothing. Fields was a football genius in the game with Denver, yet he couldn't find a way to avoid the big mistake that helped the Broncos rally from 21 behind. The defense collapsed but the quarterback could have easily pulled them out of the tailspin and didn't.

The defense is rounding into shape. They've become the league's best overall defense against the run. That's a key step. The lineup will be entirely inact with Tremaine Edmunds returns and the momentum is building with Montez Sweat's pass rush.

There was no way a Bears QB could sustain a stretch of wins with receivers like they had last year but DJ Moore fixed this problem.

All the elements exist to think Fields can win games. They're not winning seven straight to make the playoff, not with two games coming against Detroit, maybe not against Cleveland on the road or Minnesota on the road. But maybe they steal away a road win over Minnesota or Cleveland. Maybe they catch the Lions by surprise in one of the two games they play against Detroit in the next three.

Then they play three teams they should be able to beat -- Atlanta, Arizona and Green Bay.

Fields needs to win some games because the worst statistic he has is the Bears' record of 5-21 in starts with him at quarterback.

Here are a few victory targets:

Win at least one divisional game. They haven't won any under Eberflus.

Win consecutive games. They haven't done this under Eberflus or at all since Fields was quarterback when they beat the Lions and Raiders in Fields' first two starts.

Win at home. Fields hasn't done this since the interception by Roquan Smith gave the Bears the win over Houston in Week 3 last year.

Direct some late game-winning drives. He still has only one fourth-quarter comeback and two game-winning drives in his third year as starter. And one of those game-winning drives was when Smith intercepted the pass against Houston and returned it in the red zone before the drive amounted to simply kicking the winning field goal.

If you're a losing quarterback, one who goes out and puts up big numbers without logging Ws, all you're good for is fantasy football and not the real world of the NFL.

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