No Talent on Bears Says Mike Martz

Former Rams coach Mike Martz was best known in Chicago for tolerating quarterback Jay Cutler as Bears offensive coordinator for two seasons and also for forcing the team to trade away tight end Greg Olsen.

Obviously he was no expert on personnel.

"It's a no-win situation, and I feel bad for the kid. He needs to be on a good team where he can back somebody up for a year or two."

Now he's an expert on the Ryan Poles rebuild without ever seeing the new Bears regime play in a regular-season game.

Writing for the33rdteam.com as he evaluated quarterbacks, Martz has called the Bears the worst offense since the winless Detroit Lions of Rod Marinelli. He would know something about the winless Lions because he was the offensive coordinator for the two seasons prior to the 0-16 year.

"Fields is a guy that makes a lot of mistakes and is not particularly accurate at times," Martz wrote. "He's not a quick read-and-react guy, and he's on a horrendous team.

"But I don’t know if I've seen an offense that bad in talent since the 0-16 Detroit Lions. They just don't have anybody there."

Mike Martz is that guy who drove your car into a brick wall, but is now trying to tell you how to fix it.
— Adam Rank (@adamrank) August 24, 2022

Martz's comments about Fields and the Bears were not done there.

"I've seen a lot of really good players go to bad teams, and then their career just never takes off," Martz wrote. "And I think that's what will happen with Fields. It's going to take a long time for them to get talent there. He needs to be on a good football team behind really good players for a couple of years to learn how to play the position.

Hard times in Chicago 😬 pic.twitter.com/MyPwrLAmFx
— The 33rd Team (@The33rdTeamFB) August 24, 2022

"And when you put a guy behind a bad offensive line and you have no talent at wide receiver and you tell him to just go make big plays, he's going to learn bad habits. You start doing stupid stuff just trying to survive."

Martz wasn't all about pity for Fields.

"I also have questions about whether he can really react fast," Martz wrote. "I think he's a talented guy as a passer. But you don't know how to evaluate him because he just doesn't have anything around him."

Martz thinks Fields should be a backup.

"It's a no-win situation, and I feel bad for the kid," Martz said. "He needs to be on a good team where he can back somebody up for a year or two."

Martz rated Fields last in the NFC North and said he likes Kirk Cousins a lot, while Jared Goff is a bit of a "long-stroke guy."

Martz was offensive coordinator for the Rams in 1999 and then head coach from 2000-2005. He was offensive coordinator for the Lions in 2006-07 the year before they went 0-16. They were 3-13 and 7-9 in those two seasons under head coach Rod Marinelli. Then he was offensive coordinator for San Francisco in 2008.

After he was Bears offensive coordinator two years, he was head coach in 2019 for the San Diego Fleet of the AAF.