raw

I mean, that's what it is though. It's optics, it's a lockeroom thing. You can't have your previous franchise QB on the roster with your future franchise QB. We've seen the Jets and 49ers kinda do this, and it had no positive effect on the potential franchise QB. Just seems like a waste of time. If you draft a QB (or sign a FA QB in the Jets case), you aren't sold on your current QB. If you aren't sold, rip the bandage off. Don't waste time trying to salvage something. Bears also have Bagent, and regardless of how you feel he played, you can't in good faith demote him to 3rd on the depth chart, which keeping Fields and drafting a rookie would do.

Nobody on IR. Only injury related inactive is Noah Sewell, the 4th LB. This is the Bears roster that Ryan Poles intended to play, for the first time all season.

So much is being made of the reports this morning. The Bears would have to be "blown away" thing is the same thing they said last year. Pro Fields guys on Twitter are taking victory laps saying that this means he's here to stay. But despite the fact that randoms on Twitter aren't blown away by Williams and Maye, people that actually matter may be. This isn't a 5'9 sub 200lb prospect and another guy from the same university and college coaching as the QB you'd be giving up on. Everyone that evaluates prospects for a living believes these guys are better than the top of last year's draft. Even if they don't believe in that, it's a lot more to it than this. Last year, maybe not after 1 year of evaluation on an intentionally talentless team. This year, the Bears do have some talent, probably not as much as Poles thinks, but what he thinks is what matters. There was also the report that Fields needs to show consistency in 2-minute and redzone, he needs to limit turnovers, and be good in late game situations. This is the more important report from Rapaport today, IMO. The "blown away" stuff kind of assumes Fields does these things and doesn't finish this year 1-6, which based on his career so far and the remaining schedule, is a distinct possibility. If Fields is NOT good, and the Bears get a top 2 pick, it won't matter if the Bears are blown away. They will tell anyone who listens they are if they draft one of the top QBs.

I think he is gone. Too many whispers, too much writing on the wall. Bagent coming in and looking competent hurts Fields more than anything, IMO. Fields not only has to look competent, he has to look like a 3rd year QB, who was the 11th overall pick compared to a rookie UDFA. He has to leave no doubt, IMO. If Williams and Maye are off the table, Poles has to know that he can put out a competent QB for the short-term if he has to. Luckily for the Bears, it seems pretty unlikely that both will be off the table because every team has a game on Carolina, who looks putrid most weeks. And Carolina has SOS disadvantage over everyone in contention as well, so they may need to win MORE than every other team at the bottom of the league.

To piggyback, yes this is remarkably inaccurate. "A little worse every game he starts". Sure his last game was bad. But he came off of B2B 4 TD pass games with a 285+ passing in each game. One of those defenses just worked over Mahomes. And I love the old adage that you can look at someone and tell they're depressed. A) that's NOT remotely true. B) if your starting QB looks even remotely excited to be watching someone else QB his team (in game, not in the lockeroom after a win) then that's probably not the best thing,, Even if he fails, he has one of the best QB rushing seasons in NFL history to fall back on. He has very high highs passing the ball in spotlight games. He also has built in excuses if his defensive HC gets fired and with an injury to his throwing hand. The issue isn't his talent to be a QB, his body language or his lack of linear progression. It's consistency, it's not taking bad sacks, it's not putting his team in bad positions. The on-field stuff is almost secondary to the fact that committing to him likely means a lot of money invested and a high opportunity cost caused by passing up cheaper, potentially better options for the 2nd year in a row.....a chance you likely won't get again.

Seems that teams that often pick up the 5th year of their QB re-sign said QB to a long-term deal. Teams are really good about not picking up options for players who aren't for sure long-term building blocks.

Even the scenarios where Fields does well and people lose jobs likely involves the defense losing games. The issue there is that most of the guys on defense are back. The only starter they stand to lose is Justin Jones, with Jackson a potential cap casualty (Johnson's at the very least is getting tagged). And with that group playing well currently, that'd be a big step back. That being said, they do play some good offenses and were just gashed by a good offense in LA a couple weeks ago.

If you bring Fields back, you gotta be prepared to bring back Flus/Getsy. If he plays that well, they are going to win at least 4 of those games. That's a 7-win season and a hot finish (3 in a row to end the season). If he has 3 okay-to-good games and 4 bangers, you don't guarantee him money (5th year option) to learn a whole new offense/coaching staff because of the uncertainty that provides.

I don't think this philosophy works on QB. Every other position, sure. But not QB. Who cares if you lose talent at another position in lieu of a potential franchise QB. Even if that weren't true, there are underlying factors that also make this decision not as easy. Such as that 5th year option hanging out there. You have to make that decision THIS offseason. And if you decline Fields' 5th, it doesn't make sense to pass on the top QBs, because you are likely not picking top 2 in 2025 unless you are lucky enough to trade with another team who then proceeds to have the worst record again. If you accept Fields' 5th year option, you are committing 2 years to him. If you are committing 2 years to him, you are basically taking him over every QB prospect that comes out over the next 7 years most likely as that'd likely lead to a long-term deal. Because if it doesn't lead to a LT deal, you messed up bad.

I believe Fields has historically played well against good teams. And he's played well indoors, other than last year's game in Detroit. Detroit's defense isn't great, but it's not terrible either. And they can rush the passer which works against Fields. But they can't cover that well on the outside, which plays into Fields hands. Anyway, Detroit wins going away and covers.

I get it. I do think there have been QBs that didn't show many flashes as rookies that turned out to be decent. Jared Goff off the top of my head was one of the worst rookie QBs I've ever seen. Took him a while, but he became solid. That may be best case for Bryce at this point,

You would think he would have more arm strength, considering his dad's living was literally made on arm strength. LOL Honestly though, I think it's arm strength. Obviously, he has more arm strength than most people on the planet, and it's an NFL caliber arm, but it's at the very low end of that level. He's Gardner Minshew level. His feet are all over the place right now too. And the mechanics aren't near perfection, but I don't think that helps that much. He needs to be able to step into throws and get his whole body into the throw to get it where it needs to go distance and velocity wise. The elite arm guys can put that velocity on throws off their back foot. He'll never be able to do that, or throw into super tight windows. He has a Kyle Hendricks level fastball, and that's fine. But I don't think it gets much better.

The last paragraph is possible, but just like any rookie, he has room to improve. I'm VERY encouraged by him as a long-term backup. Ideal scenario, he never sees the field again because the Bears have a much better QB that never gets injured. LOL But since that isn't realistic, I think Bagent has shown enough that when he does have to play next time, if it's for the short-term, that he is competent. And competence goes a long way. If you do find that franchise QB, Bagent all of a sudden is a trade target that you can get assets for if a starting QB tears his ACL (Murray), Achilles (Rodgers, Cousins) or something else. We saw Dobbs go last week. I think Bagent is about at that level now. If he plays more in the future (preseason or real), he has the potential to raise his value to the level of guys like Matt Flynn or Matt Cassel back in the day.

I think Bryce will be fine. it's hard to show Brees/Russ traits with that roster. Those guys' OLs gave them more of a chance and they had WRs that could separate. He's looked better for sure though. That being said, I think he's only going to be "fine", which isn't good enough for a #1 pick, all they gave up to get him or their franchise to have success.

Yeah, there is something to being able to win games. I think Bagent playing below average to poorly and still be able to win games is a good thing. It's better than the alternative that they are seeing in Carolina. Bagent is clearly something based on his ability to win games (because his numbers aren't anything to write home about). There's a small chance he gets better, to the point of being a really solid option with a ton of weapons like Purdy. But at least these 4 games proved that he is at least a backup QB going forward you know won't completely embarrass you if he has to start. And we have seen embarrassing with several backups, not going to name the many names. Obviously, it takes more than the QB to win games, but this only helps whatever evaluation of Fields is left to be completed. Fields isn't going to be facing the Raiders w/ multiple time failed coach McDaniel, but if he's truly better than Bagent, he should be able to perform better against better teams as well.

I wasn't trying to say he destroyed Fields. It is what it is. Fields may have been not good enough either way. I'm just saying that Poles didn't help him. And Poles acknowledged as much by the Claypool and DJ Moore trades and the Wright pick. But individual moves, good or bad, don't really determine how a GM is doing. You can list all the good, bad and indifferent moves and none of it matters if the team doesn't win. And the team doesn't win unless it has a QB. So, it's my opinion that a GM needs to put his QB in the best spot to succeed, first and foremost. Maybe Poles feels the need to build a well rounded 53, but that will always sway my opinion on the job he's doing. And I won't need it to sway me long because they'll either be the 2006/2018 Bears for a short time or compete for 25 years like the Patriots, Packers, and Steelers based on the QB position.

"A couple mistakes" seems to "Yada yada" over the fact he destroyed a pivotal (maybe THE most pivotal) year of his QBs development by giving him nothing to work with and incompetent coaching last year. I do acknowledge the good moves as well. I like the boldness of the Claypool and Sweat trades. But at the same time, I agree with jersey that there's no reason to trust him to run the team in the right direction. But I am more willing to acknowledge the faults of Fields and accept if Flus was pushed on him by ownership and would be OK with giving him another chance, but I'd just as soon bring in a new GM with a coach and QB all on the same timeline for the first time in franchise history.

No turnovers. No sacks allowed. 0 defensive TDs allowed. 7 min TOP advantage. Outgained them by 80 yards (130 before that final drive) and still need a bad coaching decision to beat the worst team in the NFL

Terrible coaching. Honestly, if they had gone for 2 this is a different game. Either they are up 4 and Carolina doesn't go for a very stupid 59 yard FG. Or they are up 2 and Carolina plays for the winning FG instead of whatever the hell they were doing.

Very odd strategy to go with the wide alignment with the edge rushers. They created natural passing lanes for a 5'8 QB by not bunching things up and forcing him to try to throw over them. And it's not like they were out there trying to contain him from getting out of the pocket either. Just terrible coaching.

If this was Sunday afternoon, I wouldn't be watching.

The Bears can't rush the passer. And Young's best game this year came in the only game he was sacked less than 4 times since the opener. Carolina still lost that game 41-24 to Detroit, but Young had 247 yards passing, 3 TDs and that's their season high in points. The Bears aren't going to put up 41 like Detroit, but if Carolina puts up 24, they probably win. The Bears defense also works into Young's strengths as he likes to dink and dunk and the Bears like to play bend, don't break and tackle everything in front of them. And it's been 2 games since the Chargers game so they're due to forget how to tackle again tonight.

Herbert was not activated

Like who? Seems to me that it's mostly bad when a QB gets an HC/OC change before he is established as a good QB. I can't think of any situations where the offense was changed after Year 2 of a QB's tenure that led to success if the QB wasn't already established as a good QB (aka OC doesn't matter at this point). Herbert was really good before they brought in Kellen Moore this year. Lamar was good before they moved on from Roman. Obviously guys like Rodgers, Brady, Josh Allen, etc were all really good before they had OC changes. I mean, it's mainly because an OC goes as the QB goes. A bad QB likely means OC is fired. If so, new OC doesn't typically make new QB good. If a QB is good, he usually loses his OC to a HC job. There's situations like Roman/Jackson where they aren't getting over the hump and are stale offensively as well, but again, established QB.

I know QB's shouldn't be evaluated on W/L record. But if those are Fields' numbers and they end up 2-6 or 3-5, I don't think it moves the needle much. He has to win games AND put up those type of numbers, IMO. But the problem is if he does both of those things, you gotta commit another year to Eberflus and Getsy. Because you don't want to change everything up on Justin when he's finally putting it all together. You also aren't going to guarantee Fields' 5th year (for 23M) while also forcing him to learn a 3rd offense in 4 years. Even a turnaround this year would mean a year and a half before figuring out this offense. And maybe you bring in a similar scheme, but there's nothing that Fields has shown that makes me believe he'll just pick up a new offense and hit the ground running in 2024. So, you may be looking at 2025 before he's comfortable again in a new offense.