Analyzing the high-profile opinions about Justin Fields with the Bears, stay or go?

Later in this piece, I will list those that say move on from Fields versus those that say keep Fields. It is more than a bit startling to see the stark dividing line between everyone whose reputation from their football opinions is linked to one degree or another to their income take a stand to move on from Fields versus those whose football opinions are not tied to their wealth.

In order to believe in Fields' future success you need to believe that his growth is real and has genuine momentum that will lead to Fields' fixing his flaws. This also, obviously, means belief in Fields' ability to become the best version of himself outweighs the doubts created by his many mistakes. This is the single most important factor in deciding for or against Justin Fields continuing in Chicago. If anyone can get the closest to the truth about this, it makes the most sense to me that it would be the former NFL quarterbacks over everyone else.

So here is the list of pro-Fields voices versus the give-up-on-Fields voices that I have come across. First here are the quarterbacks who believe the Bears should roll with Fields. Chase Daniel, Tim Jenkins, Chris Simms, Alex Smith, Dan Orlovsky, Jay Cutler, Phil Simms, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Leaf, and Jim Miller. JT O'Sullivan is also on this list but he put together a very specific set of conditions required for the Bears to keep Fields. Attaching these conditions to keeping Fields makes perfect sense to me and will be detailed later in this article.

3 of these 12 QBs have YouTube channels where they have done a deep dive into Justin Fields' tape which shows in detail why they believe he is a keeper. O'Sullivan of course has his list of conditions to this. Kurt Warner also has his own YouTube channel. He is not for the Bears keeping Fields because Fields has not shown enough consistency with nailing the layups and on-schedule plays.

Next, we have former players who are pro Fields and did not play quarterback. They are Louis Riddick, Von Miller, Corey Wooten, Chris Long, Roquan Smith, and Lance Briggs. Next are the former scout and NFL front office professionals and media members who are pro Fields. They are Greg Gabriel, his friend the QB expert, former scout Daniel Kelly, Trey Wingo, Peter King, and Mike Florio.

In the Chicago sports media contingency, Herb Howard is a Chicago radio personality on WVON and is a guest on Chicago media outlets like CHGO BEARS. He is unabashedly in favor of keeping Fields in Chicago. WSCR's Laurence Holmes and Leila Rahimi very much appear to want to keep Justin in Chicago but I have not heard them, flatly, state this. Then we have former tight end, Clay Harbor who is a Chicagoan and played for the Bears. He like Herb Howard is a guest on Chicago media outlets. He, often, speaks, highly, of Justin Fields even to the point of, vigorously, defending him. However, I have not seen a flat-out endorsement of Fields by Clay.