NEWSLETTER
Every year, rookie minicamp opening has me praying to the football gods that the only news to come from the weekend is that everyone is in good health.
And to this point, we haven’t had any unsavory news from the injury front.
As an additional bonus, a piece of what I would consider tremendous news emerged from the weekend.
Because it sounds like Chicago quarterback Justin Fields is ready to level up his game.
“Where he was at this time last year to where he is now, I think he’s just light-years ahead of where he was,” Offensive Coordinator Luke Getsy said, via the Chicago Tribune’s Colleen Kane. “And I feel like he has a ton more to grow going forward. So we’re excited to get the best out of him moving forward and keep working toward where we think he can go.”
Well, good news for the Bears. Not so much for opposing defenses.
Think about where Fields was at this time last year. It wasn’t just that Fields was a second-year player learning a new offense. That just scratches the surface of Fields’ journey in 2022. Fields was a second-year QB learning a new scheme (his third in as many seasons), from a first-year play-caller (Getsy), working under a defensive-leaning head coach (Matt Eberflus), and with a less-than-alluring supporting cast. And every bit of that previous sentence showed up early and often between last May through September. The growing pains were real — and quite painful, I’d add.
It was evident that the Bears were slow to pick things up offensively. But things began clicking when the calendar flipped to October. A spark showed up with Fields connecting on a deep pass to Darnell Mooney early against the Giants. A week later, another bomb from Fields to Mooney helped spark a day in which QB1 completed 71.4% of his passes, threw for 208 yards and a touchdown while putting up a 118.7 passer rating. Starting with that Week 5 performance in Minnesota, Fields’ next 10 games saw him put up a 96.9 passer rating and account for 21 touchdowns. The Bears won just one game during that stretch, but it wasn’t because of Fields’ lack of trying.
Fields’ in-season improvement was undeniable … and impressive. And now, Fields gets a whole offseason to work on his mechanics, better understand the system, and has a better cast of characters around him. Getsy was able to build an offense around Fields’ skill set. In turn, Fields leveraged an improved game plan to keep the Bears in games. This time around, his team should be better equipped to win those in 2023. And if Fields is truly “light years” ahead of where he was a year ago, it’s about to be scary hours for teams tasked with defending him.
