Bear Digest

Rumor Mill Places Justin Fields Back Home

Analysis: A Report Atlanta made an offer for Justin Fields is definitely not one easy to discard even at the combine, where rumors quickly live and die.
Gene Chamberlain|
Rumor Mill Places Justin Fields Back Home
Rumor Mill Places Justin Fields Back Home

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Chicago Bears

Put all the NFL's decision makers save for Matt LaFleur and a few other spoil sports, together with much of the NFL's media and the players coming out for this year's draft in Indianapolis and what do you get?

Rumors. It never fails.

It's the NFL Scouting Combine and nothing is certified as the gospel truth coming from the mouths of Bears coach Matt Eberflus or Ryan Poles but the speculation is more rampant than ever about Justin Fields being traded. 

And they haven't even started working out the 2024 rookies at Lucas Oil Field yet.

Then again, there are those just as certain he won't be traded and then there are other possibilities.

About the closest anyone has come to getting it from the horse's mouth is NBC Sports Chicago reporting with a "league source" Tuesday, three paragraphs from the end of a story, that the Falcons "checked in" with the Bears regarding Fields.

Maybe burying it doesn't matter because Peter King buried a belief the Bears would trade the first pick at the bottom of his final column on Monday morning.

It's easy to doubt talk of unnamed sources and "checking in" at this thing, though. 

In 2019 someone was certain John Ross was coming to the Bears because Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy saw a need for speed and because there was a "source" who said so. Of course nothing like that happened but the Bears didn't need the underacheiving fastest man in combine history to have a lousy season.

In this case, there is good reason to believe it really could happen because Falcons coach Raheem Morris and even GM Terry Fontenot seemed to want to spew some  news about a quarterback and kept stopping just short during interviews they did on radio row and with combine media.

There's no doubt the Falcons' quarterback situation is unsettled and they need to do something, whether it's Justin Fields or a draft pick. It's so desperate a situation that it should virtually be assumed already that Atlanta would have had interest. But it's good to know there is a source behind it.

"If we had better quarterback play last year in Atlanta, I might not be standing here," Morris said at his press conference.

They want to get better in a hurry and Desmond Ridder and Taylor Heinicke impressed no one in Chicago when they played there in a 37-17 New Year's Eve Bears win.

"We gotta get it right and that's real clear," Morris told reporters. "We haven't shied away from that. We won't close any doors. It can be a veteran, it can be a young player. We won't close any doors. It's about getting it right, whatever that is."

When Morris talked to CBS Sports HQ he added an element.

"You want to go get the best fit for your people, you want to get the best fit for your coaches and you want to get the best fit for our city," Morris said. "And you want to do all those things and there's nothing ruled out."

The city?

Justin Fields is from Atlanta.

"There's a lot of different flavors, skill sets, physical attributes, but what never changes is, it's about the makeup and the character and the work ethic," Fontenot said, in a description that sounded almost like how Ryan Poles described Fields in his combine presser.

Then Fontenot dropped this bomb when talking about the talent the Falcons could get frrom the Georgia Bulldogs.

"We are always looking hard not just at the players on Georgia’s roster, but there are a lot of players from Georgia. We love our hometown guys.”

Told in his CBS interview that people will read something into words about the city, Morris couldn't deny it.

"People are going to read into those words however they do those things and you cant stop that," he said. "Obviously there's people that are from Atlanta. There's people that are from around Atlanta. You could name the mileage of how close some of the people are. But you've got to do what's best and right for your team at the right time."

Not everyone is convinced the bidding is done. Pittsburgh may be heard from yet.

Who knows if there are others yet to come calling?

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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