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Quarterback controversies are nearly an annual affair in Chicago. Not having a franchise QB for decades on end will do that. But the debate around Justin Fields offers a new wrinkle.
Ordinarily, jumpy Bears fans want to run the QB out of town long before local sportswriters make any such call, and certainly before the Bears’ coaching staff and front office sour on their guy.
In Fields’ case, the dynamic is the opposite, at least for a healthy chunk of the Bears’ fan base. The vast majority of sportswriters say the Bears need to move on from No. 1 and select one of the several promising college QBs with what appears will be the first pick in the draft.
We don’t know yet what the coaching staff and front office think. We do know this: The Bears will finish the 2023 campaign with yet another losing record.
What strikes us as unusual about the Fields question is that many fans want the team to exercise more patience with an athlete blessed with a highly unusual combination of attributes. Quarterbacks with the size, strength, speed and arm of Justin Fields are rare indeed. Anyone the Bears would select to replace him would not have all of those gifts.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
The dynamic is so weird that some sportswriters are openly complaining, with one decrying “an oddly extreme band of loyalists that, like any cult, excuses his flaws and failures, always paints him as the victim and blames the media when confronted with negative evidence.”
A Justin Fields cult? In the annals of Chicago football fandom, where we thought we’d seen it all, we never thought we’d see a Bears quarterback achieve such status after posting a 23% career winning percentage.
We’ll keep from taking sides. But it’s nice, in a way, that people are getting so worked up about something that doesn’t, say, threaten the future of our democracy. Sports gives us a useful channel to disagree with each other, without coming to blows at the holiday dinner table.
One thing’s for sure, though. We wouldn’t want to be Bears President Kevin Warren or general manager Ryan Poles. Whatever decision they make at the end of the season, it will be a crapshoot.
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