Danger in Bears Short Passing Emphasis

To most, it seems like an innocent attempt by Justin Fields to improve a weakness.

There can be a danger here.

"Just being more consistent with my quick game stuff," Fields told ChicagoBears.com's Larry Mayer about his offseason work. "I feel like down the field I'm pretty accurate."

It's true enough Fields has been better throwing downfield than he has at short passes.

He hasn't taken the checkdown enough and when he does he seems to struggle getting the ball in stride to a receiver, or putting it in a place where the receiver can gain after the catch. Then again, he hasn't had many good receivers.

An exam of game film through a whole season isn't necessary. Directional stats on NFLGSIS.com confirm this.

The Bears averaged 4.58 yards per completion on short pass plays to the left, 7.73 to the middle and 4.93 yards on short throws to the right. Each ranked last in the league. They weren't even good at completing short passes. They completed 55% of short tosses to the right. That was last in the NFL. They were a little better to the left at 25th.

Considering the Bears ranked last in passing, their deep passing yardage gained and completion percentages were surprisingly solid. The worst they had in ranking was 29th in yards gained over the middle deep at 8.09 yards.

It's actually a good thing to be 29th in average yards gained deep middle because, as it was, Fields held the ball too long and the worst place to throw after holding the ball too long is deep and over the middle. It invites disaster.

So Fields has established he can throw deep and especially on the intermediate routes. Pro Football Focus tracked him as the league's best passer 11-19 yards downfield.

Yards After Catch

One huge reason Fields must work on the shorter passes is the need for yards after the catch. They were last in the league in YAC each of the last two seasons when he has been their chief starting QB but they haven't been good at this for a while regardless of who the passer was, finishing bottom 10 each year since 2018 except 2020.

The danger in all of this is Fields is good enough as a deeper passer and forcing him to start throwing the shorter pass always could make him into Checkdown Charlie.

Last year Fields owned a terrible 72.7 passer rating in the first six games but he was getting gains downfield well enough for a 7.6-yard average per attempt. Passers need yards per attempt to be in the 7s if not 8.0 or even higher so he was doing well there with completions.

However, things changed for him starting with the win over New England. He put together a 92.3 passer rating and 63.5% completions with 13 TDs and only six interceptions over the final 11 games. Those are all good numbers but the only game they won in that stretch was the game with New England, the franchise's last win.

Fields' average yards per pass attempt during that stretch plummeted to 6.76.

As good as Fields might be as a longer passer, he still only ranked 17th in the annual Deep Ball Project by Johnny Kinsley, a statistical study of quarterbacks. So if he can still get better at this, there's no reason to start looking short.

If the Bears were merely trying to get Fields to be more careful with the ball last season, or he was trying to be more careful with it, it succeeded. They also succeeded in cutting down his gains on passes downfield.

Over the long haul, he's not going to be much of a quarterback with a yards per attempt so low. That's Mitchell Trubisky territory.

Warning: Checkdown Alert

Fields needs to keep the focus downfield and figure out when he needs to throw short quickly, then get it out quickly and on target. Working on the short stuff in OTAs and preseason is fine but they can't neglect pushing the ball downfield.

It's not easy. It's the real battle for any young quarterback. Read the defense and figure out quickly where the best chance for completion will come. Then get it out.

Whatever they do, the Bears don't want to turn Fields into a guy who throws short out of fear of turnovers. The danger in developing a young quarterback is instilling too much fear of mistakes.

Bears fans saw this happen in Year 2 of the Matt Nagy offense with Trubisky. It was apparent throughout Trubisky's career that he couldn't thrown downfield, anyway, so it might not have made much difference. But they did emphasize the shorter throw too much.

Fields has already established he can run and has the kind of arm to hurt teams deep.

The goal now with three legitimate wide receivers available to Fields should be keeping the downfield targets as primary options and making the shorter targets easy secondary options, the kind of sure things leading to chains moving and gains downfield on yards after the catch.

Following this track is proper development. Throwing short repeatedly is only a track to nowhere.

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