The Chicago Bears have been trying to ease Justin Fields into the new offense. This has led to a historically low number of pass attempts through four weeks, and for the most part, Fields has not looked comfortable.
While some of this is on Fields, who is lacking decisiveness, there are other ways to make life easier for him. One thing that they can do is get him involved in the ground game more often.
Sure, Fields has 146 rushing yards so far this season, but 133 of those yards came on scrambles. That essentially means that he picked up those yards when he had no other option, or potentially bailed a clean pocket to get those yards.
On the flip side, he has 13 rushing yards on designed runs. That only comes on nine rush attempts as well. With 34 rush attempts on the season, that is a lot of scrambling.
Chicago should realize that they have a quarterback who is going to run at times. Rather than seeing him run on passing plays, they should design some runs for him to keep the defense honest.
While Fields has nine rush attempts on designed runs, Jalen Hurts has 27 designed calls, and Lamar Jackson has 18. Kyler Murray, Marcus Mariota, Josh Allen, Daniel Jones, and even Trey Lance in two games has more designed rush attempts than Justin Fields.
Nobody is saying to turn Fields into a running back, but it is clear that top quarterbacks in the NFL such as Allen, Jackson, Murray, and Hurts are all being more efficient on designed runs.
Fields is fourth in the NFL in scramble yards but ranks 15th in the NFL in designed rushing yards by a quarterback. The top quarterbacks in designed yards are Jackson, Hurts, Lance, and Murray. These are three of the top ten quarterbacks in the NFL. It is not disrespectful to the quarterback to make a run a designed call.
This is helping them immensely in the passing game since the threat is there. For defenses against the Chicago Bears, they use their legs of Fields against him and want to turn him into a scrambler, because it means a play broke down.
The smart coaches are taking their quarterback and adding a scrambling element built in, so that teams have to respect the run before forcing a quarterback to run.