A former Chicago Bears coach used his platform with Tyler Dunne of Go Long to get revenge on Justin Fields for a comment the quarterback made last season.
Before the Bears Week 3 game against the Kansas City Chiefs, Fields said in a pre-practice presser that it “could be coaching” as the reason why he was playing robotic to start the season. He said he wanted to play free and not think about what his coaches were telling him to look at during the week.
Field’s comments went so viral on social media during the Bears’ practice that Fields returned to the media after the workout to clarify his remarks and say he didn’t mean to criticize the coaching staff.
The harm was still done.
Dunne quoted two unnamed former coaches of Fields in his article about where the Bears went wrong with Fields and Mitch Trubisky. One coach compared him to a beheaded bird:
Fields ran for 1,000+ yards in Year 2 but, as one ex-Bears coach observed, he was more “chicken with his head cut off.” This was never sustainable.
Another coach blasted Fields for his processing skills:
Fundamentals can improve. That’s physical.
Processing is a different animal. Processing is more ingrained.
This is why both coaches and personnel agree that a redshirt year would not have changed much.
“When you watch him, watch his eyes,” says one of Fields’ former coaches. “He tries to see the whole thing and doesn’t see anything. His eyes are all over the place and it’s just really hard to watch. It’s just bad football.”
Fields had issues taking instruction from veteran quarterbacks during his rookie year in Chicago. It’s no wonder he wasn’t the perfect student with the coaching staff.
And his former coaches have stories to tell.
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