4 Areas Chicago Bears QB Justin Fields must improve for the 2023 season
By Evan Bruner
No. 3: Trusting Receivers/Getting Rid of the Ball Quickly
Getting rid of the football quickly and cutting down on sacks essentially mean the same thing. Fields held on to the ball for longer than any other quarterback in the league and was tied with Russell Wilson for being the most-sacked quarterback in the league. It’s hard to think this correlation occurred merely by chance.
In all likelihood, Fields will be a high-sack player for his entire career. Scrambling quarterbacks tend to have higher sack rates, and Fields' athleticism and ability as a rusher make him well-suited for longer-developing plays.
The good news for Fields is that being a high-sack player doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Russell Wilson is a prime example of someone who has overcome high sack numbers to have a very successful career. Wilson’s elite deep ball compensated for the additional negative plays his style brought to the table and made him one of the top quarterbacks in the league.
Fields can follow Wilson’s path, but to do so, he needs to trust his playmakers. As bad as the Bears were at creating separation a year ago, Fields was equally bad at throwing to them. There were numerous instances of receivers getting open only to have Fields hesitate or attempt to scramble.
What made this particularly puzzling was that Fields often read the defense correctly and still chose not to make the throw. Fields’ mental block here appears to be more of an instinctual issue than an intellectual one. Fields was much better against more complex zone coverage concepts than vanilla Cover 1.
It’s evident that Fields just didn’t trust his receivers to make plays even when they were open. It’s easy to sympathize with him, given what he was working with. But it’s key that a quarterback not make a bad situation worse, and Fields' distrust of his receivers added fuel to the fire.
While the addition of D.J. Moore helps things, Fields will still need to make the tight window throws to other receivers that he was unwilling to a year ago.