Team Reps for Justin Fields at Practice

Although Justin Fields is labeled questionable and limited in practice, the Bears have been getting him team reps and like the way his shoulder is improving.

Justin Fields has been taking some team plays even though he has been listed as limited all week in practice, and is "questionable," to play in Sunday's game with the New York Jets due to a left shoulder separation.

"We'll decide everything in 48 hours but what it was today was it was limited and the medical staff said individual and he could do a certain number of reps in the team periods," coach Matt Eberflus said.

Although Fields had some team reps during practice, Eberflus didn't want to go into specifics about how many or what type went to the Bears starter or backup Trevor Siemian.

"For certain guys, some guys get mental reps, some guys get physical reps," Eberflus said. "I'm not going to detail out individual reps of players."

In general teams, Eberflus described Fields' condition as improved.

"He's feeling better every single day and we've got 48 hours to assess that," Eberflus said.

For Eberflus, there still isn't a gray area where they would play Fields only if he's able to do certain things.

"My preference is to play if he's 100% ready to play," Eberflus said. "That's my preference."

The Bears are 3-8 and Eberflus says this does not impact on the decision. The decision is the same on whether Fields can play whether they were 8-3 or 3-8.

"I don't think so, I don't think so with this one," he said. "I think it's the same decision really, but I uderstand what you're thinking there but I would say that it's the same."

It's the Bears' perogative to change Fields' status with an upgrade or downgrade on Saturday but Eberflus said they'll be taking the full extent of time to decide.

"I think we're going to let it go up to the game," Eberflus said.

The decision involves getting medical clearance. Fields will get a pain-killing shot most likely, then how he says he feels about being able to perform and finally the coaches will assess it.

"My preference is to play if he's 100 pct ready to play," Eberflus said. "We'll try to do that. We think that's where it is, and we'll see where it is on game time and we'll see where he feels."

The sticking point to all of this is that Fields is a different type of quarterback than Siemian, who is less mobile. The Bears have been using a good amount of designed quarterback runs each game with Fields in, so essentially they would approach with two different game plans.

"You do have to have plays that are for Justin and the ones that are designed or are designed for (him) and then you have to have the ones that are designed for the backup at that position for sure," Eberflus said. "But it's not, you know, a huge range. Obviously our offense is our offense and there's certain things that Justin does and we've added since the bye week, the mini-bye. So it will just be our offense."

Eberflus did have one encouraging phrase in his press conference about Fields.

"I think he is geting better, yeah, I think he is," Eberflus said. "I think we'll see where it goes, we'll see where it goes through the course of the week and we'll see what happens."

It's a game-time decision.

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