Justin Fields thanks Bears players for still believing in him

Justin Fields was so very good and so very bad in one fourth quarter, which ended with a dramatic Bears win against the Vikings Monday night. But will Chicago move on from their third-year quarterback in next year’s draft or vie for another big name?

There’s a good chance the Bears will have the No. 1 pick in next year’s NFL Draft. And they may even own the top two. That’s because Chicago has the Panthers first-round choice in their pocket after a trade for Bryce Young, the top pick of last April’s draft. Plus, they have their own first round selection. Given that the Bears are 4-8, it’s almost a given they’ll be selecting very early in the draft.

The Bears picked Fields, the former Ohio State star, in the first round of the 2021 draft. He’s the best running quarterback in the league. Yet he’s still struggling for consistency in the passing game. It’s why the Bears, even with the benefit of four Vikings turnovers, still struggled to score. They won 12-10 thanks to a last-second field goal.

Fields fumbled the ball away on consecutive series in the fourth quarter, which negated some of the turnover advantage the Bears owned over the Vikings. Still, they regrouped for one final, 10-play drive to set up the game-winning 30-yard kick.

“The guys never wavered, so the guys in the locker room, appreciate them for sticking beside me and believing in me,” Fields told reporters after the game. “And (the) defense did a great job by getting us the ball back for that last drive. And offense did a great job executing those plays. Felt great, and really just felt good of fighting through the adversity, ups and downs of the game. Guys never got too high or too low, and we fought and finished in the end, so it was good.”

Fields completed 27 of his 37 attempts for 217 yards. The blitzing Vikings sacked him three times. Plus, he ran a dozen times for 59 yards. The Bears changed up their offensive strategy against the Vikings in an attempt to nullify their pass rush. But the screens and dump offs only worked for so long. Next Gen Stats reported that 43.2 percent of Fields’ attempts were to targets either at or behind the line of scrimmage. It was the highest in a game for a quarterback this season. You could see the strategy reflected in this stat. Fields averaged a benign 2.7 yards per pass attempt. That’s typically not winning football unless the opponent is sloppy. Still, he completed a 38-yarder to D.J. Moore to set up the game-winning field goal.

I never want to see a justin fields screen pass ever again pic.twitter.com/PZGrXn0mkH

— DOM (@DOM_Frederic) November 28, 2023

“Relief. Relief,” the Bears quarterback said. “We came in at halftime, and we were up, defense was playing a great game, offense kind of got off to a slower start than we wanted to, but nothing that mattered in the first half. It mattered to us starting in the second half, so that was our message was just finish, finish, finish, because there’s been too many times this season where we’ve been up, we didn’t do a good job of finishing, so again, just going back, proud of everyone for fighting through the end, no matter what had happened, and finishing the game out. Ultimately got the dub, so yeah.”

But ultimately, will the Bears give up on Fields and try for Caleb Williams or a Drake Maye? Or will they use those quality picks to build more around Fields? Expect a lot of draft chatter between now and April.