Five Turnovers Include One Familar Situation
Justin Fields is operating in uncharted waters.
It's not something he enjoys.
"I've never been in this position, where I'm losing," Fields said. "So I don't know how to feel. Like. My only reaction to this is just to keep working."
Fields struggled to get rid of the ball before the blitz arrived, fumbled twice on sacks and threw three interceptions in the Bears 38-3 loss to Tampa Bay.
"I'm not angry at all," Fields said. "At the end of the day, it happened. We have bad days. Y'all have bad days. And y’all can either get depressed. Or y’all can get up the next day and go to work.
"And I think that's what our team is going to do. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm not angry at all. Ya know. Just. (Blank) happens."
A full load of it happened to the Bears offense Sunday and one of the things happened once before. That was confusion with a penalty.
Fields threw an interception to Dee Delaney on a deep pass intended for Allen Robinson after the Bears trailed already 7-0. Robinson slipped on the play and the 26-yard return to the Bears 40 set up a second Bucs TD.
"In the headset they were telling me we had 12 men on the field, so I was trying to snap the ball quick," Fields said.
If you're getting deja vu, it's easy to explain. Something similar happened last week against Green Bay but it was a penalty Fields thought Green Bay would get for apparent offsides, but none was flagged.
No penalty came for too many men on the field for Tampa Bay.
"And then me snapping the ball quick, I think it caught our receivers off guard, because we were trying to get a flag, so me thinking that we had 12 men on the field, that's a free play," Fields said. "So I'm thinking, 'All right, scramble around and stuff like that.
"And then, of course, I see A-Rob downfield and I think he slips and of course the pick. I mean, that's just trying to get 12 people on the field, and then it just went bad from there."
It went from bad to worse, actually, but the other poor plays were more breakdowns in blocking or in Fields failing to get rid of the ball quickly more than they were problems determining penalties.
Fields suffered four sacks, fumbled on two of them and the Buccaneers recovered. Until Sunday, he had three fumbles but the Bears recovered all of them. He also threw interceptions to Jordan Whitehead and Pierre Desir after the one to Delaney.
On one of the strip sacks, running back Khalil Herbert didn't pick up the safety blitz.
"They weren't throwing different stuff," Fields said. "I think, you know, we watched film on it and I think just the blitzes, the blitz packages, we were having trouble at the beginning of the game picking that up.
"But I think as time went on we did a little bit better with protection. So that's just football for you."
Teammates aren't worried about Fields being adversely affected by the performance, which finished at 22 of 34 passing for 184 yards. Before Sunday he'd never thrown more than one interception in a game.
"The guy responds to adversity well," linebacker Roquan Smith said. "That goes back to the Cleveland game. He faced a lot of adversity throughout that, and then the following week, the guy responded in a great way.
"So I have a lot of confidence in the guy. It's not his fault the way this game went. It's just about all of us looking ourselves in the mirror and just getting better."
Maybe Fields needs to look a little harder, as the one who has the ball all the time and can't afford to turn it over.
'I think I just have to put it out there to lead by example and just be me and just have that positive attitude, have that fighting mentality where nothing can phase us and, like I said before, we bend but don’t break," Fields said. "We always going to keep going no matter how many times we get knocked down. So just keep pushing."
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
