Chicago Bears QB Justin Fields gave a brutally honest assessment of his performance after the Bears beat the Houston Texans 23-30 on Sunday.
“I’ve just gotta get better, plain and simple,” Fields said via the Chicago Sun-Times. “Straight up, I just played like — I want to say the A-word, but I’m not gonna do that. I just played like trash. I played terrible. Really just gotta be better.”
So what does a “trash” performance look like for Fields? He completed eight of 17 passes for 106 yards with two interceptions and two fumbles. That’s… not great. He also ran eight times for 47 yards.
Fields was unable to come up with an answer when he was asked what specific things he needs to do to improve. All he could say was “a lot of things.”
Head coach Matt Eberflus wouldn’t blame Fields specifically. Since Fields is young and struggling, Eberflus said that everyone around him needs to be better to support him.
“I think when you are working with a young quarterback in a new offense, I think the people around him have to be solid,” Eberflus said. “So that’s important for us, meaning that the protection has to be good, the run game has to be good, the defense has to be really good and special teams, we’ve got to be awesome.
“What you do is you support that quarterback while he’s growing. And while he’s going through this, and there’s going to be good and there’s going to be things that he has to improve on, but that’s on the whole football team. The whole football team is like that.”
The run game is cooking, with 281 of their 363 total yards against the Texans coming on the ground. But that’s pretty much a necessity since the Bears don’t appear to trust Fields’ arm at all. Including Week 3, Fields has thrown just 45 passes this season. That’s a shockingly small number, and way behind most other teams. Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen eclipsed that number in a single game, making 63 pass attempts against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
Fields has not seen the field well over the first three weeks of the season and hasn’t been wowing anyone with his awareness. He’s missed wide open receivers, launched bad throws, lost track of where guys are on the field and in the pocket, and tripped over the feet of his own teammates. There’s a lot for him to improve on, but at least he knows it and is immediately ready to get to work.
“I’m about to go to the film tonight,” Fields said. “I played terrible. I’ll see what I could’ve done better and get better for my teammates.”
