There was a point in the Bears’ Week 3 game in Cleveland where it was clear, to the coaches at least, that first-round quarterback Justin Fields’s anticipation was just a tick behind where it needed to be. A Browns corner had moved tight to the line to press veteran burner Marquise Goodwin. The corner got on top of him, and did a decent job of disrupting his route, but Goodwin would eventually shake loose of the jam and the defender.
Unfortunately for Goodwin, and the team, Fields had given up on him by then, even though the receiver later wound up where he needed to be downfield, and the play went nowhere.
Not great. Still, not the end of the world. Fields is a rookie, after all, and this would stand as one of those teachable moments a quarterback can learn from as part of a trial-by-fire baptism into pro football. And besides, the coaches all figured Fields would eventually get this sort of thing, even if not quite in his first NFL start.
What they didn’t count on was it coming around the following week.
But there they were in the third quarter against the Lions, and there was Fields in a similar call, this time with the ball set to go to second-year phenom Darnell Mooney. Mooney was lined up to Fields’s right, and was even coming off the line with Detroit corner Bobby Price. Fields took a three-step drop, hitched and unleashed a bomb down the sideline, trusting that Mooney would get past Price and pushing Mooney farther outside to, in football terms, throw his receiver open, by putting the ball in a spot to influence Mooney away from Price.
That one ended up going for 32 yards, and set up Chicago’s third touchdown of the day, which made it 21–0. But more than just that, it illustrated that Fields was improving his command of the offense, and the program, pretty quickly. And the best part, as Fields’s coach Matt Nagy saw it, was that it very clearly wasn’t good enough for Fields.
“Justin was mad at himself for not leaving it more inside for him to be able to catch it for a touchdown,” Nagy told me, after wrapping up meetings Thursday night. “So now the next time we were able to get a chance to run a similar type play, Justin’s gonna wanna make it perfect, make it a 10-of-10 throw, and have Darnell score for a touchdown. That’s just a very simple example. No one may ever see it, but a 3-hitch timing throw, trusts his wideout to get open, threw him open.
“And it’s hard to sack a quarterback when you throw the ball on time, and he did that. That’s major growth for him in a simple way.”
Hitting on the big play a week after missing it is one thing. Wanting more out of the big play is another.
And the truth is, both are why Fields is now the Bears’ starter for good.
