Hope springs eternal in July and August when pads start popping at training camp.
But it will be a while before we get back out to camp. In the meantime, Chicago Bears Chairman George McCaskey shares hope for the future — and it starts with Justin Fields.
“We’re excited about his potential,” McCaskey said, via The Athletic. “We’re excited about his growth. And we need to do everything we can to get all of that talent out of him.”
McCaskey offering up an opinion regarding Fields’ future is a nice touch. The last time he was fielding questions about Fields’ future, he was juking them with moves that would make your favorite running back jealous:
Bears owner George McCaskey was asked about QB Justin Fields and began his answer with, "I'm just a fan; I'm not a football evaluator…"
— Jason Lieser (@JasonLieser) January 10, 2022
Unfortunately, to this point of the offseason, the Bears haven’t been successful in getting help for Fields.
Even though I wasn’t expecting the Bears to make market-changing moves, there were mid-tier players signing relatively modest deals who could’ve been upgrades from what the team was trotting out in Fields’ rookie season. Bringing in just one starting-caliber offensive lineman (Lucas Patrick) and only back-of-the-depth-chart additions at receiver (Byron Pringle, Equanimeous St. Brown) simply isn’t enough to properly evaluate Fields moving forward.
And to pour more salt in the wound, the failed Larry Ogunjobi signing may have mucked things up/played a role in keeping the Bears from achieving what they were hoping to in the offseason’s early going.
If you’ll recall, Ogunjobi was going to be the new regime’s first splash signing. Admittedly, signing a 3-technique DT wasn’t high on my offseason shopping list. But the point of doing work early in the negotiation window is that it allows your team to pivot quickly to other needs. Line things up early, then knock down your secondary options. Unfortunately, that isn’t how the cookie crumbled for Chicago. What happened instead was Ogunjobi’s failed physical led the Bears to back out of that deal and search elsewhere for their defensive line help. And through all that, there is a high probability that Poles missed out on swinging a deal for players at other positions of need.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations and I almost feel like the process is flawed a little bit where I wish we could have some of these images and some of the physical done before (the agreement),” Poles said. “That’s going to be some type of rule change. I don’t know the process in getting that done. It’s probably something at a meeting like this in the future. But I think a lot of people were hurt just with the whole timing of it.”
At a minimum, the timing was all sorts of problematic. And the impact could still be reverberating to this day. Maybe the Bears could still up with Ogunjobi, which is a scenario Poles discussed earlier in the week. But there is no getting back what could’ve been because of what happened earlier.
But, hey, at least we know there are still options worth targeting (and via different ways, too):
So, What’s the State of the Bears Offensive Line and the Market Now?https://t.co/nPFLA6GPgG pic.twitter.com/qfGrEkltea
— Bleacher Nation Bears (@BN_Bears) March 29, 2022
The Dolphins Are Fielding Trade Calls for WR DeVante Parker (Hint, Hint)https://t.co/Q3rlasMUel pic.twitter.com/1WkDoJt6WK
— Bleacher Nation Bears (@BN_Bears) March 29, 2022