Justin Fields is a catastrophe. But so is everything else at the Chicago Bears | Chicago Bears

Times are robust on Justin Fields Island. Property costs have plummeted. Supplies are working low. The true believers have turned feral. By this time subsequent week, Wilson could have drifted away.

Time doesn’t perform usually in the NFL. Three months looks like a era. The preseason pleasure about what the Bears would possibly be and what their quarterback, Fields, may do has already made method for the grim actuality.

In a league that homes the Jets, Browns, and Texans, the Bears are laying declare to the high spot amongst dysfunctional franchises. Here is a crew with a defensive-oriented head coach fielding the worst protection in the league, an offensive coordinator at odds together with his quarterback, a defensive coordinator who reportedly left the crew attributable to an HR situation, and a common supervisor who has preached the lengthy recreation however faltered on short-term selections.

The tradition, scheme, and outcomes on each side of the ball have been dire. Through three weeks, the Bears are useless stinking final in level differential – behind the Broncos, who misplaced by 50 factors final week.

The crew’s offense has bordered on tragicomic by means of the early goings of the season. Fields has toggled between frenzied and torpid. The offensive line has been terrible. Chase Claypool, who the crew dealt what wound up being the thirty second total decide to accumulate final season, looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.

But the greater image is easy: the workers don’t belief the quarterback – and the quarterback doesn’t belief his workers. On the well-crafted stuff that offensive coordinator Luke Getsy has known as, Fields has refused to tug the set off. On the dangerous stuff, the quarterback has no probability.

Blame flows in all instructions. This isn’t a quarterback or coordinator situation; it’s an everybody situation.

Sometimes you possibly can take the proper strategic, long-term strategy however whiff on all the selections in the brief time period. After ejecting on the Matt Nagy period, Chicago’s plan was stable. They determined to usher in a new GM, head coach and workers, tear down the roster, and rebuild round Fields.

Chicago punted on this 12 months’s crop of rookie quarterbacks in favor of sticking with Fields. Ryan Poles, the crew’s chief decision-maker, dealt away the first total decide in the draft to assist hoard property and encompass Fields with satisfactory expertise for this 12 months and past, mirroring the strategy the Dolphins took with Tua Tagovailoa. Poles needed to guage Fields with higher expertise round the younger quarterback.

Through three video games, Fields hasn’t proven indicators of development. He has regressed.

One of the points is that Fields is a totally different participant at the moment than the one who entered the league. At Ohio State, he was a dropback passer who would create together with his ft solely when crucial. He ran a refined offense with timing and precision.

In Chicago, that participant has vanished. Fields’s mechanics border on the lackadaisical these days. He strikes with a jagged, arrhythmic high quality that may be onerous for teammates to learn and clashes with the circulation of the offense round him. It’s as if somebody sped up the beat to Wonderwall, however stored the tempo of the lyrics the identical. He is the worst quarterback in the league this seaon, by QBR rating, under even the Jets’ a lot maligned Zach Wilson.

The Fields who the Bears drafted, who they constructed a workers for, who they tailor-made an offense round, is not the Fields who has discovered a smattering of success in the league. When the Bears pivoted their offense final 12 months to an all-run, all-the-time setup, Fields took flight. He continued to battle to seek out consistency as a passer however was electrical as a runner.

Most of his manufacturing, although, got here when issues broke down and he may freelance together with his legs. Baking that into an offense with out the undergirding of a passing recreation is nigh-on unimaginable. Still, it seemed as if the Bears had struck gold. Fields was not good however not deadly as a runner in school – he rushed for 1,113 yards, not way more than Trevor Lawrence’s 943 yards. In the NFL, although, he turned out to be the most dynamic ball-carrier in the league, no matter place. Huzzah! Pair that model of Fields with the man who threw 41 touchdowns for Ohio State in 2019 and you’ll be on to one thing particular.

But that hasn’t occurred.

Playing with a run-first quarterback is not the Bears’ philosophy; they’ve by no means coached it. Instead they tried to revert again to their offense of previous to kick off this season, limiting Fields’ use of his legs and pushing him to be a from-the-pocket quarterback. It has confused issues, with a quarterback trying uncomfortable doing three-quarters of the issues he’s requested to do and a play-caller uncomfortable (or incapable) of putting in the quarter of issues the place Fields has confirmed he can thrive.

The issues lengthen far past Fields, although. For as poor as the offense has been, the protection has, someway, been worse.

Eberflus has proudly paraded his “HITS” mantra throughout his head coaching stint. A good defense, in Eberflus’s mind, is built on Hustle, Intensity, Takeaways and (playing) Smart. The early returns at least rhyme with HIT. Take a deep breath, Bears fans.

Over the past two seasons combined, the Bears defense ranks:

• 32nd in EPA/play

• 32nd in dropback EPA/play

• 32nd in pressure rate

• 32nd in pressure rate with a four-man rush

• 32nd in sacks per game

• 32nd in yards conceded per coverage snap

You don’t need to know the inner workings of every metric to understand this: the Bears have fielded the worst defense in the NFL since appointing Eberflus as head coach, by some distance. They have generated the worst pass-rush in the league and been sloppy in coverage. They’re the only team to fall below the -0.100 mark in EPA/play, a measure of a team’s down-to-down success. The gulf between the Bears and the 31st-ranked team during that span is the same as the distance between the 31st and the 26th.

Worse: The Bears have allocated plenty of resources trying to build a unit to Eberflus’s vision. They have spent second-round picks on Jaquan Brisker, Kyler Gordon, Tyrique Stevenson, and Gervon Dexter. They spent a third-rounder on Zacch Pickens. They doled out cash in free agency to sign Tremaine Edmunds, TJ Edwards, Justin Jones, DeMarcus Walker, and Yannick Ngakoue.

It’s worth pointing out the Bears dealt away Roquon Smith last season, one of the game’s top linebackers, because they didn’t want to pay a market-setting premium for a non-premium position … before handing huge contracts to linebackers Edmunds and Edwards in free agency. They also constructed a defense built principally on four down linemen generating an overwhelming pass rush … before turning that pass rush over to a crop of rookies and average or over-the-hill vets.

Eberflus has presided over a woeful defense built to his specification, a corrosive quarterback-coordinator partnership, and off-the-field issues on his staff. If he’s not providing a schematic, cultural, or staffing advantage, what exactly does the Chicago head coach bring to the party?

It’s tough to find a path forward. There are no good answers, and that’s because the simplest answer – rebooting and starting again – is a bad one, too. It will cost most of the staff their jobs. The Bears could cut ties with Eberflus now to try to inject some fresh life into the franchise, but with an offensive coordinator already under scrutiny and the defensive coordinator already exiting the building, it’s difficult to figure out who they hand the controls to.

The other option is to strap on the helmets and enter tank mode, hoping to swipe Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, or any of the other top quarterbacks in what is expected to be an exceptional quarterback draft class. Doing so would leave Fields on the outs, working for a franchise actively looking to dump games. Even in that world, there’s a chance Fields is relegated to the sidelines, lest he catch fire at some point during the season (at least as a runner) as he did down the stretch last year.

Either the Bears need to reinvigorate the offense with a new voice or they should look to deal Fields away before the trade deadline, to give him a shot to resurrect his career elsewhere and to recoup some return on their investment. There’s certainly a team (maybe two) in New York who would be happy to hear the phone ring, and plenty of other suitors will feel they can unlock the quarterback’s potential. If it doesn’t happen before the trade deadline, an end-of-season divorce feels inevitable.

There are few things more dispiriting than watching obvious talent flounder. It’s best not to sell your Fields stock yet. But if you can convert them to CJ Stroud bonds, call your broker.