Chicago Bears: How Justin Fields can beat out Andy Dalton at camp

Justin Fields needs to show his impressive downfield accuracy

One thing the Bears greatly lacked last season was a quarterback that could throw the ball accurately downfield. Both Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky struggled to complete the deep passes and even the intermediate passes as well. Both of them constantly checked down giving the Bears no threat downfield and making their offense one-dimensional.

Fields was incredibly accurate during his career at Ohio State. As he was the second-most accurate quarterback on intermediate and deep passes since 2018. The most accurate was Joe Burrow. Additionally, Fields had the highest percentage of passing yards that came before the catch in both 2020 and 2019 according to PFF. He consistently was throwing the ball deep and rarely threw screen passes.

Fields proved to be extremely accurate in college while throwing deep more often than any quarterback in college. He needs to continue to prove that while at training camp compared to Dalton as Dalton is just average at throwing the deep ball and doesn’t have the arm strength to even compete with Fields.

Regardless, Fields needs to show the traits that he has and Dalton doesn’t are crucial to the success of the Bears’ offense. Nagy can do so much more with Fields than he can with Dalton with deep ball accuracy and athletic ability. It’s all about how well Fields can learn the offense. Let’s hope Fields can beat him out.