After the 2023-24 season, the Chicago Bears were given the number one draft pick and there was much controversy over what the front office should do. Some fans believed the Bears should keep their current quarterback Justin Fields and trade the pick, whereas others wanted them to draft Caleb Williams. Williams was the consensus number-one pick across the board, but the Bears had a lot of other problems, like their O-line, D-line and receiving corps. The Bears ended up choosing Williams with their first pick and drafted Rome Odunze with their ninth, improving their receiver situation. The Bears also traded for Keenan Allen and Darrell Taylor but had no other notable changes. This proved to be a horrible mistake.
Last year, the Bears had a final record of 7-10, winning four of their last six games. Of the 10 games the Bears lost, there were three that they should have won. The circumstances of these losses were out of Fields’ control. These games were against the Broncos, Lions and Browns. In the Lions and Broncos game, the Bears lost due to poor coaching decisions toward the end of the game, and in the Browns game, they lost because Darnell Mooney had dropped the game-winning pass. If they had won those games the Bears would have made the playoffs and could’ve been a dangerous team.
In Fields’s last home game, the crowd began chanting “We Want Fields.” Fields had brought life back to the city that was still recovering from the double-doink and had become the supposed franchise quarterback for the future. However, despite all that Fields had done for Chicago, the Bears traded him for a conditional fourth-round pick, meaning if he started for more than half the games it would be a fourth-round pick, and if he didn’t it would become a sixth-round pick.
Everybody knew that Fields had been screwed over: in his three years as a Bear he had two different head coaches and two different offensive coordinators, which is not a recipe for success. C.J Stroud, the Houston Texans quarterback and former teammate of Justin Fields, also believes that he was done dirty by the Bears.
“They tried to make Justin work [with] three coordinators work and two head coaches, that makes no sense,” Stroud said on a podcast.
Fields is now the starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers in their 2-0 start for this season, whereas Williams is 1-1. Fields threw for 156 yards and had a 91.9 passer rating in week one and threw for 117 yards with a passer rating of 97.3 in their week two win. On the other hand, Williams threw for only 93 yards with a passer rating of 55.7 in week one and threw for 174 yards with a passer rating of 51 in week two. Just by looking at the statistics, one can see that Justin is performing much better than Caleb. Some may attribute Caleb’s struggles with it being his rookie year and his horrendous O-line, but it is no excuse, Fields had to play with an O-line almost as bad and an overall worse team.
The biggest problem critics had with Fields was that he held on to the ball too long and would cause a lot of sacks, which would sometimes turn into fumbles. Similarly, Williams is struggling with the same issues, he holds on to the ball too long. Although Williams was able to make incredible plays in college, it seems that he can’t translate that talent to the NFL when against athletes of the same caliber as he is.
The Bears have created an incredible team that is on the verge of doing great things. They only lack an effective quarterback — Fields should have been that quarterback but was robbed of that opportunity, which then went to a player that isn’t even better than he is.
