I'm going to make an argument that's going to piss off a lot of meatballs.
And contextualizing my argument likely won't take the sting out of having to sit through another 14 games where the offense looks exactly like it does now and the game plan will seemingly never change as the offense stays extremely conservative.
But take a moment and remember what all of us were talking about before the season even started.
This roster did not have much talent on it. In fact, one could argue that we probably had about the same amount of talent as an expansion team after all the cuts were done.
The Bears made difficult decisions to get out of cap hell and set themselves up for a lot of free space next year. But that means everything going into this year was going to be extremely limited.
And this is still the NFL. The head coach is going to want to do everything he can to win games, even while grossly undermanned. The front office is still going to have the expectation of winning games on them, even as they are stuck with an expansion roster thanks to the turnover they had to do as a result of the failures of the previous regime.
Looking through three games, and the moves made during the offseason, I now see exactly what the front office and coaching staff were thinking and it has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of referendum on Justin Fields.
They knew they were going to be out manned and therefore they came up with the only way they could figure it on winning some games this year - play a style that doesn't allow the opposing offense to have the ball for very long,
Run blocking typically is easier for offensive lines than pass blocking and the Bears already had some decent running backs on the roster. So they went out and got wide receivers who were better arguably at run blocking then they were receiving.
The one wild card is Jones Jr, who I believe was healthy they will utilize more on screen passes and dump-offs to capitalize on the speed.
The entire point of this being:
THE FRONT OFFICE AND THE COACHING STAFF DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE OFFENSIVE LINE TO HOLD LONG ENOUGH DURING PASS PROTECTION.
People keep missing out on this.
It was said on the broadcast that Fields over the past year and this many games was the most hit quarterback behind the line of scrimmage in the NFL and it's been mentioned in other broadcasts and on NFL next-gen stats that over this past year and this handful of games that Fields also has the least amount of time to throw in the NFL.
None of this excuses fields are absolves him of when he makes mistakes. But at the same time not everything people are calling his mistakes are actually his mistakes.
Everything is geared towards run this season because they don't think they have the talent to do anything else. There's no point in going out and getting that stud wide receiver for Fields if they don't think the offensive line can pass block long enough for Fields to make that throw.
This is going to be a process. This year WILL suck and we all just have to get through it.
And if you still think the Bears will get rid of Fields at the end of the season and draft a new QB - let me crush those dreams right now...
The staff and front office know this isn't a good enough team around him to properly evaluate Fields.
Yes, Fields needs to get better. No doubt.
But the whole team does before we know what we got in him.
