Timing Continues to Be a Bears Issue

Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy saw Wednesday's practice as an abberation.

The team he has been seeing guided by quarterback Justin Fields has looked much different than the one with footballs bouncing off their hands, or with passes sailing over the heads of open receivers.

"Off to a good start, throwing a lot of stuff at them," Getsy said. "They're handling it pretty well for the most part. We keep having a mistake here and there, pretty much every play we probably have a mistake right now that are easily cleaned up.

"But we're challenging them and we're not holding back and these guys are responding really well to it, so it's been really good."

It's when they have multiple mistakes on plays that they're struggling, and it happened regularly in Wednesday's practice. Getsy sees it as much a problem with timing in the passing game as anything else.

"When I say we're off to a good start, I just think that they're getting better every single day," Getsy said. "The mistake isn't the same mistake twice. We're pushing the envelope.

"We're going to continue with our installations and keep challenging them with different things and every day we create new situations for them. These are all things we need to experience and learn from them and sometimes you've got to fail at something first before you can get really good at it."

Specifically with Fields, Getsy thinks it's a matter of timing needing to improve through practice more than anything else.

"Yeah, I mean he had a couple today where he could, like, whether it's getting rid of a hitch or anticipating the lane like a precision rout and they're making a decision, anticipating.

"So that relationship part of it, I think, is where we can continue to grow."

So where is Fields at exactly in all of this installation and development? He's not about to grade himself.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't really know how to answer that question to be honest. I think I'm just getting better every day. I don't know if I can grade myself necessarily but I think I'm improving every day and, you know, I think there are some times where some routes you might need to hit, some routes you might not."

Positive plays were overshadowed Wednesday but they haven't always been throughout camp to date. And on Wednesday, Fields showed the timing continues to come along with DJ Moore.

Moore caught a slant over the middle thrown with perfect timing and anticipation and it's unlikely anyone would have kept him from racing the distance if it had been a game.

"It's going to help us a lot," Fields said. "Having guys like DJ take a slant for 20, 30 yards is definitely going to help us a lot and once those defenses start coming up, start taking away the short game, that's when we can go over the top.

"Those quick passes are definitely going to be an advantage for us this year, especially with the guys that we have that can catch and run with the football. I'm excited for sure."

As much as the timing, the influence of game-planning is going to be huge.

"Guys probably aren't going to have as many mistakes in the game because we have a set game plan, we have a call sheet (then) to where–boom, all right, we know this formation, we've got these set of plays," Fields said. "But training camp, it's like we've got a big list of plays."

They simply call plays from the list and need to know all of them.

"It's definitely very stressful mentally on different receivers and stuff like that," Fields said. "Guys are moving down to different spots. There's Z, X, F in the slot. It's very mentally challenging."

It's not as challenging as the Bears made it look in Wednesday's practice, though. They'll just keep working at it.

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