2021 NFL Draft Guide: Homer Corner - Chicago Bears
Published: Aug 30, 2021
I know a lot of Bears fans, not to mention fantasy players, are speculating on when Justin Fields will start his first NFL game. There has been much debate among fans as to when that first start should come, in terms of what is best for the Bears this season as well as Fields’s long-term development. I am not one of those Bears fans, because I'm not sure it matters, especially for this season.
The Bears will probably finish third in the NFC North regardless of how many games Fields starts. They will probably miss the playoffs and they almost certainly won't win a playoff game. With that in mind, I can't get worked up over how many starts Andy Dalton gets before he gives way to yet another quarterback of the future.
I understand it is fun to talk about whether Fields should start Week 1, or Week 2, or not until next season, but I don’t think it is particularly productive. It is nearly impossible to know what is best for his development, and the dirty little secret NFL talking heads don’t want you to know is that there is a very good chance it doesn’t matter when a rookie quarterback makes his first NFL start. There are plenty of good players who started Week 1, but there are perhaps even more flops. The same is true of quarterbacks who started midway through their rookie seasons. You could make an impressive list of Hall of Fame quarterbacks who sat out their entire rookie seasons, but most of those quarterbacks were drafted late or were behind very good starters or were drafted to very good teams. None of those circumstances applies to the Bears.
One of my favorite arguments I have seen is that "Justin Fields should start when he is ready." On its face, it's hard to argue with that. The problem is I am not sure anyone knows when a rookie quarterback is ready or not. The Chargers thought Justin Herbert wasn't ready, but after a trainer punctured TyRod Taylor's lung, Herbert was pretty clearly the best rookie quarterback in a loaded class.
You could argue the Chargers' old regime wasn't any good, which is why they were replaced, but there is no reason to believe Matt Nagy is any better at identifying when a rookie quarterback is ready. In fact, Nagy has already failed once to develop a raw rookie quarterback who can run. If he succeeds in developing Fields, it will almost certainly be by accident.
This leads us to the true reason it doesn't matter when Fields makes his debut: this organization will always flounder so long as there is zero accountability from ownership on down to the coaching staff. No competent organization would let the same general manager and head coach draft and develop a quarterback after failing so spectacularly the first time.
If there is anyone less capable of identifying when a quarterback should start than Matt Nagy, it is probably Bears general manager Ryan Pace. I’ll never get over Pace trading up one spot so that he could draft Mitch Trubisky over Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes. No one else was trading up to draft Trubisky, and even if they did, Deshaun Watson would have still been there when the Bears were on the clock.
Pace’s other quarterback decisions have been nearly as bad. He gave Mike Glennon $18.5 million guaranteed to be the starting quarterback, and while I actually thought it was a chance worth taking at the time, I was wrong. Pace actually gave up a fourth-round draft pick to take on Nick Foles’s bad contract. Foles wasn’t any better than Trubisky or Glennon, though anyone who watched Foles outside of his two miracle runs with Philadelphia already knew that. This offseason Pace signed Andy Dalton after Dalton was a complete disaster in Dallas, even though Foles is still on the roster.
Pace finally made a great move I quite frankly didn’t think he was capable of when he traded up to draft Justin Fields. As my father likes to say, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while. Perhaps the most compelling argument I’ve heard for when Fields should start is that the Bears should let him redshirt this season so that Pace and Nagy cannot ruin his career. Both are in the last years of their contracts and the hope is that the Bears will replace them after the season with a coach and GM who can get the most out of Fields.
This obviously won’t happen because Pace and Nagy need Fields to play at some point in order to try to save their jobs. Nagy will let Dalton start and hope that he is competent enough for the Bears to limp to the playoffs. It is unlikely, but stranger things have happened. If Dalton fails as we expect, Nagy gets a second chance to save his job when Fields comes in. If the Bears improve under Fields or he at least shows enough to suggest he is the quarterback of the future, Nagy has a chance to convince an ownership group that doesn’t believe in accountability that he should stay on for a few more years.
And now we have gotten to the real problem with the Bears, and in fact all of the men’s sports franchises in Chicago: ownership simply is not capable of providing the necessary accountability for sustained success. Every once in a while a Chicago team can tank its way into a ton of good young players, like the Cubs and Blackhawks a decade ago or the White Sox now. They can luck their way into a franchise-changing star like the Bulls did with Derrick Rose or the Bears appear to have with Justin Fields falling far enough in the draft for the Bears to trade up. As Chicago fans, we have to enjoy those flashes of success when they happen, because there is no reason to believe they will last long.
At the end of the day, this is where I come down on the Justin Fields debate: he should start from Week 1. Bears fans have had enough Andy Daltons in our lives. The fan base that has been subjected to Foles and Trubisky and Glennon and Jay Cutler and Kyle Orton and Rex Grossman and Craig Krenzel and Cade McNown and Rick Mirer deserves better than even one game of Andy Dalton. I don’t know if Fields is going to be good. I don’t know if anyone can be good behind the Bears’ offensive line. But I know Josh Fields throwing to Allen Robinson and Darnell Mooney is exciting, and it has been too long since Bears fans have had any real cause for excitement.