What a Change at QB Would Mean
A change in quarterback skill sets is not the only result the Bears would see from the trade of Justin Fields.
If—or possibly when—it occurs, the move toward drafting Caleb Williams can trigger a change in makeup and expectations for the team.
If past is prologue, then the changes are not necessarily going to be negative overall. Nor are they likely to create a great jump in the record, although there should be improvement.
There are intangibles to take into account with things like leadership or friendships. All of this can enter into the equation but in the end this is professional football.
It's best summed up by Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth trying to explain how he let the murder of Moe Greene go in the Godfather II: "...this is the business we've chosen."
Here are the immediate concerns and what to expect if and/or when the Bears trade Justin Fields.
Locker Room Fears
Fields owned the Bears locker room through three years of blood, sweat and tears. The support he received at season's end became obvious not only from comments by DJ Moore and offensive players but even on defense from Jaylon Johnson and Montez Sweat. And Sweat had only been with the team for nine games.
If they trade Fields, the thinking goes, there will be a revolt within the locker room.
Right, sure.
Maybe if they traded Fields at midseason with a 4-4 or 5-3 record there might be a revolt. Trading him and installing Williams in the offseason after a 7-10 rercord allows for transitional time and possible improvement.
What happens is teams break down and reform every year. There will be a handful of new defensive players and changes made to defensive scheme because new coordinator Eric Washington will have his input then. The defensive players will be preoccupied with trying to win their own starting jobs and pick up the changes. They're busy trying to improve as players or learning how to play with different teammates in the scheme. So scratch defensive players off the list for leading some kind of player revolt.
The offensive players will be busy trying to learn a totally new offense. Some will be trying to establish themselves as starters over other players in training camp. Rookies, like Williams, will have their heads swimming with too much to take in to worry about what someone did who was in Chicago the previous three seasons.
It all gets washed away with the transition.
After the 2021 season on the day Matt Nagy was fired, plenty of Bears felt they let down their coach and it wasn't right to fire him. David Montgomery took the firing very hard. Ironically, a lot of players didn't want to see Montgomery leave after the 2022 season, but things moved on.
The next season after Nagy's firing, there was great optimism and a rebirth of sorts under Matt Eberflus. None of what happened the previous year mattered then. It's all pretty much forgotten by everyone except fans and media.
It's just this way in the NFL, which stands for, as we all know thanks to Jerry Glanville, "not for long."
Bears Improve
The averages say the Bears have a real chance at a playoff berth because most teams improve by drafting a quarterback first overall.
The AFL-NFL merger is generally recognized as the start of the modern era, for lack of a better cutoff. So dating back to that point, there have been 27 quarterbacks drafted first and the following season 22 of the teams improved over the previous season with this first player drafted. Some of them didn't play the first pick very much, but a great majority did.
It's not 22 of 27 teams improved, actually, but 20 of 25. Four teams were worse and one the same. Eliminate two of the 27 teams because there was no previous year to their franchise. One quarterback was David Carr in 2002 with the Texans and there were no Texans in 2001. The other was Tim Couch with the Browns in 1999. As horrible as it sounds now, there were no Browns in Cleveland from 1996-98 because they had been moved by Art Modell to become the Baltimore Ravens. So there were no Browns before Couch was drafted.
The average improvement by the 25 teams to draft a quarterback No. 1 overall is 2.6 wins.
There is an asterisk to all of this. Most of the teams who drafted a quarterback No. 1 overall were really rotten the previous season. They weren't 7-10 like the Bears. So it was easier for them to improve.
The Bears had a .411 winning percentage at 7-10. Only three teams of the 25 who drafted No. 1 and took quarterbacks had records as good or better than the Bears had last year. So it's a very small number to be working with, but one of those three teams improved and only one of the three coaches was fired a year after drafting first and posting a worse record.
That was former Bears player Jeff Fisher, whose Rams in 2015 were 7-9 then drafted Jared Goff and went 4-12. During the 4-12 season ownership got fed up with the losing and fired Fisher and Jim Fassel finished the last three games as interim coach. Then Sean McVay was hired for 2017.
Reset for the Coach
Not only is the salary cap clock reset for the Bears with a new quarterback in Caleb Williams, so is the coaching clock.
Barring some unforeseen and unprecedented horrible collapse of the team, there is every reason to think Eberflus will be given two more years if they draft a new quarterback. He's resetting his own clock by resetting the QB clock.
When teams drafted a quarterback first overall, they have to expect a breaking-in period. Rookie QBs are going to throw stupid interceptions. They need to hope their defense can withstand playing under circumstances like this for a while. Beyond that, they can expect better play based on past results.
Of the 20 teams to improve in the year they drafted a quarterback first overall, the average amount of improvement was 2.6 wins.
The popular number is two wins improvement. This happened to nine of the 20 improved teams. Give the Bears two more wins and they're not necessarily a playoff team. They're sweating out the last wild card. Give them the 0.6 wins more, or one more win, and at 10 wins they're probably in the postseason.
If postseason is the cutoff, the Eberflus would be kept. But that's not likely to be the deciding factor. He'd be kept anyway, barring a total collapse of the team.
The main reason he's more likely to get the benefit of the doubt if they improve by even one more win or stay about the same record-wise is what has happened with Fields.
Fields faced the normal problem adjusting from college with new coaches and a new offensive system, then the Bears fired Matt Nagy after his rookie year and went to Eberflus and the offense was Luke Getsy's. While the jury is out on Getsy as a coordinator after his first two years doing it, the Bears should have learned all of the switching around of offenses did not help Fields.
After all, the franchise did exactly the same thing to Mitchell Trubisky and he also struggled with development.
Would they be willing to do this a third time, except this time with the first pick of the draft?
It doesn't seem likely. Stability would be more likely.
About the only way this seems a potential course of action is if they made new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron the head coach if they took a step back in 2024.
Hmmm.
Better Surrounding Talent
They'll obviously be better equipped to keep bringing in more and more talent because the salary cap resets on the quarterback position. They're not going to pay $60 million or more out a year for a quarterback on a new contract. It's going to be less than $10 million. The cap remains wide open to add players in the future. The immediate team isn't affected by this but Year 2 of that new quarterback is.
On-Field Change
To illustate what the change on the field will be, use Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert as a comparison to Williams. Not that Williams is going to be as good as them, but his playing style has been compared often to Mahomes and Herbert is a passer first who has good mobility as Williams does and both are more likely to use the mobility to look upfield and throw.
The Bears will be throwing it on third down to try and get first downs and move the chains rather than depend on scrambles by a quarterback.
Mahomes has accounted for 9.5% of the first downs he produced on scrambles in the last three seasons and 90.5% on passes. Herbert has accounted for 8.8% of the first downs he has accomplished the last three seasons while running but Fields' first downs come by running 30.6% of the time and by passing 69.4% of the time.
The planned QB runs largely will be replaced by attempts at passing. The passing yards will go up. Holding penalties and sacks allowed by the offensive linemen should go down, although it might not be as much as one would expect. The sack percentage dropped a huge amount, from 10.6% to 3.4% last year when Tyson Bagent played instead of Fields and that was behind the same line.
The reason holding penalties might not drop as much is Williams tends to hold the ball a long time. Offensive linemen can get holding penalties pass blocking but also on blocking for scrambles.
Either way, it should be more of a conventional look on offense and this means almost all of the rushing yards will need to come from running backs who must benefit from better run blocking.
QBs as No. 1 Pick of Draft
| Year, QB, Team | Record Before | After Draft |
|---|---|---|
1970 Terry Bradshaw, Steelers | 1-13 | 5-9 |
1971 Jim Plunkett, Patriots | 2-12 | 6-8 |
1975 Steve Bartkowski, Falcons | 3-11 | 4-10 |
1983 John Elway, Broncos* | 2-7 | 9-7 |
1987 Vinny Testaverrde, Buccaneers | 2-14 | 4-11 |
1989 Troy Aikman, Cowboys | 3-13 | 1-15 |
1990 Jeff George, Colts | 8-8 | 7-9 |
1993 Drew Bledsoe, Patriots | 2-14 | 5-11 |
1998 Peyton Manning, Colts | 3-13 | 3-13 |
1999 Tim Couch, Browns | No Team | 2-14 |
2001 Michael Vick, Falcons | 4-12 | 7-9 |
2002 David Carr, Texans | No Team | 4-12 |
2003 Carson Palmer, Bengals | 2-14 | 8-8 |
2004 Eli Manning, Giants* | 4-12 | 6-10 |
2005 Alex Smith, 49ers | 2-14 | 4-12 |
2007 JaMarcus Russell, Raiders | 2-14 | 4-12 |
2009 Matthew Stafford, Lions | 0-16 | 2-14 |
2010 Sam Bradford, Rams | 1-15 | 7-9 |
2011 Cam Newton, Panthers | 2-14 | 6-10 |
2012 Andrew Luck, Colts | 2-14 | 11-5 |
2015 Jameis Winston, Buccaneers | 2-14 | 6-10 |
2016 Jared Goff, Rams | 7-9 | 4-12 |
2018 Baker Mayfield, Browns | 0-16 | 7-8-1 |
2019 Kyler Murray, Cardinals | 3-13 | 5-10-1 |
2020 Joe Burrow, Bengals | 2-14 | 4-11-1 |
2021 Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars | 1-15 | 3-13 |
2023 Bryce Young, Panthers | 7-10 | 2-15 |
*Traded by original draft team
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