Bears’ choices, involving Justin Fields and Caleb Williams, portend trouble for quarterback prospects.
The Bears’ actions Wednesday’s outcome regarding Justin Fields’ future in Chicago could reveal a lot or nothing.
On Wednesday, the Bears chose to keep head coach Matt Eberflus in place while firing offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and several other offensive staff members, providing the first response to a series of awkward offseason questions.
This response indicates that the team is still afraid to take risks and is stuck in a losing cycle that is exacerbated by the inability to bring in a general manager, coach, and quarterback on the same schedule.
The decision to keep Eberflus but fire Getsy puts emphasis on the Bears’ upcoming quarterback decision: will they continue to use Justin Fields or trade him and select Caleb Williams or Drake Maye with the first overall pick?
The Bears’ decision to retain Eberflus can be interpreted as a tacit admission that they will stick with Fields as head coach because Fields is the team’s best chance to win in 2024.
It will be interpreted by those on the opposing side of the Bears’ quarterback controversy as a sign that they intend to select a quarterback first overall. The Bears’ greatest selling feature will be having either Drake Maye or Caleb Williams.
giving Eberflus a two-year window could be a lifeline for an offensive coordinator in high demand, provided that everything with the rookie signal-caller in Year 1 is going well, record notwithstanding.
When it comes to how people feel about Fields and his future in Chicago, Wednesday’s actions can be compared to a Rorschach Test. The fact that Eberflus was kept on while Getsy was fired is seen by those who favor his retention as an admission that the problem lay with the system rather than the quarterback. Some will interpret it as evidence that the Bears intend to rebuild their offense from the ground up, starting with the quarterback.
With Eberflus’s precarious situation, it will be difficult for the Bears to court a highly-coveted offensive coordinator during the offseason. While it is true that there are only 32 positions available, most coordinators will prioritize moving to an area where they will have more time to succeed. The pool of potential candidates would probably be further reduced if said OC candidates were required to create an offense based on what Fields excels at in the NFL.
In addition, Fields would be working with his third system and third offensive coordinator in four seasons. This season, Fields discussed how he wasn’t completely at ease with Getsy’s system until Year 2. The mental demands of playing quarterback in the NFL are immense, and learning the language of a system takes a lot of practice. It would be disastrous to expect Fields to pick up a new system without providing him, the new coordinator, and Eberflus with a guarantee for the 2025 season.
The Bears’ best pitch to an excellent offensive lineman who is willing to join a staff that might be eliminated in a year is that they own the No. 1 overall pick and the ability to draft and develop either Williams or Maye.
Although it won’t completely solve their issue, an aspiring coordinator hoping to establish himself should find the opportunity to commit to a generational prospect intriguing. The Bears ought to have a good pool of candidates as a result.
All of that suggests that in 2024, Fields will play somewhere else.
Although the Bears don’t always follow the rules, it’s not out of the question to hire an offensive coordinator with the understanding that he will hopefully
Either way, it’s not a winning formula.
Whether or not the Bears stick with Fields or draft a quarterback, the decision makers at Halas Hall have given whomever their franchise quarterback an impossible task. Either they are going to ask Fields to learn his third system in four seasons and thrive again with a losing hand, or they will draft a rookie quarterback to a lame-duck staff and repeat the mistakes made with John Fox and Mitch Trubisky and Matt Nagy and Justin Fields.
It would be unserious to correlate Wednesday’s move directly to the impending quarterback decision. But the Bears have proven themselves to be unserious time and time again, and there’s no reason to think this will be any different.
Either they will ask Fields to prove himself in a new system, or they will restart the cycle of quarterback failure and wonder why they can’t get it right.
Neither is a recipe for success. But the Bears have been looking for one for almost half a century. Maybe it slipped under a desk in a back office at Halas Hall. Perhaps they’ll find it one day.
But not on a day that too closely resembles a number of other failures in franchise history.
When the Bears decided to keep Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace after the 2020 season, then-president Ted Phillips infamously said:
“Have we gotten the quarterback situation completely right? No. Have we won enough games? No. But everything else is there.”
History, as it so often does, repeats itself, especially at Halas Hall. The Bears still haven’t got the quarterback position right. Wednesday’s moves don’t inspire confidence they are on the right track, regardless of what the future holds for Justin Fields.
