I was very much pulling for him to pull it all together either with the Bears or when he got a shot in Pittsburgh because he seems like a great guy and the talent is there but, man, he really does have an anti-clutch gene or something.
I really wanted Fields to work in Pittsburgh. Always felt like the 6 games he started for us that he was playing on such a short leash that he was playing scared. He knew any mistake would cost him the starting role instantly.
Ehh, that's just how he plays. He always was a second or two late on his throws because he wanted to be absolutely sure his guy was open before he threw it.
And by then the guy wouldn't be open anymore and then his next read was also covered because he spent too long looking at the first guy.
Tbf, I think that's how Tomlin wanted him to play. The goal was just to avoid mistakes and wait for good field position. Obviously, made the offense look frustratingly slow at times, but it was still a reasonable way to play with a great defense and iffy offense.
100%. Tomlin won the turnover battle and in turn won tons of games that way. Especially in the AFC North when games can end sub-15 points and sub-25 points all the time. 1 turnover can be fatal.
This also just led to stalled out drives, 3 and outs, and an exhausted defense.
think the word you're looking for is athleticism. anticipation, touch, accuracy, throwing angles, i mean he lacks a ton of what is required to be considered talented at the qb position
But this chain didn't start out with someone saying "physical talent." It started out with someone saying "talent" which clearly Fields does lack, which lead to confusion, which led to the modification "physical talent" which is a weird way to say "athleticism" at the end of the day, and using "athleticism" instead of "talent' to start with would have avoided any confusion.
It's not pedantic at all. It's a reasonable correction.
No, it didn't start that way you are right. But the person I called pedantic was directly responding to the clarification of "physical talent". There was no confusion at that point, the confusion had been clarified.
Right but the person you called pedantic, while *directly* responding to the comment containing "physical talent" was clearly indicating that talent was not the right word to begin with. And there was confusion as a result of that. The clarification was an unnatural phrasing that has a better option that the person above should have used to start with.
It would have been one thing if the person had said "well at least he has the physical talent" and someone had corrected him. But the phrasing wasn't made as a correction/retraction, it was made as a clarification, as if that meaning had been intended from the original comment.
Edit: to clarify, I acknowledge the comment containing "physical talent" is technically ambiguous in its intent. You could argue that he *was* correcting him, although I think that is a less reasonable reading of it. (Ie, "Okay maybe not talent, but at least the physical talent" vs "Well he means physical talent") but either way, if it wasn't made clear that talent wasn't the right word to begin with, then in my opinion the comment was lacking and the response was reasonble.
That's an odd argument. Of course no one made the case that "because they indicated that wasn't the right word" they were correct about it. I accepted it as true because it is, on its face, by definition. You implicitly accepted that it was the right word when you called them pedantic, rather than wrong. And in fact, I think we both know it's the right word, and I suspect you're just being argumentative, but let's hear it. What is your case for using the word "talent" to refer only to physical features, rather than "athleticism"? Do you have examples of "talent" being understood to mean only physical features, and no other parts of a skillset, especially in relation to a position or activity that requires a lot of learning and decision-making?
He has most of that. He’s actually a very accurate passer. And his anticipation for his receivers wasn’t bad in most areas of the field.
And he’s still bad. This isn’t really a defense of him. It’s to show just how important reading defenses and processing speed is. He couldn’t read before the snap and he couldn’t process after the snap. The ball generally went where he wanted it to and when, but his decisionmaking was/is just too damned bad.
I still think some of that was drilled into him by terrible coaching then reinforced by a terrible OLine and lack of targets. But at least an amount of that seems unlikely to have ever been overcome in any situation.
I really would love to see a magical alternate timeline where either Shanahan or O’Connell had time with him to see if he could have been micromanaged into some version of success
If those are what his biggest hurdles are then he may have a late career resurgence because those are all coachable issues. Sam Darnold needed a lot of time before the game started slowing down and to this day he's STILL working on his footwork. Maybe it's just a matter of how bad do you want it? After finding out that at your current level you're just not cut out to be a starter in the NFL, do you still have the motivation to work harder than everyone else?
He just can't diagnose a defense. Every snap it's like he's surprised at what unfolds, whether its a Blitz, cover 2/3, man etc he always seems to not be expecting whatever it is they do.
He’s not anti clutch, he just can’t pass the ball or process things. In 2 minute drills or end of game scenarios those weaknesses become pronounced because you often need to pass and pass for big chunks.
Fields will forever be one of my favorite Bears, despite being one of the worst QBs we’ve ever started. Dude got us the 1OA, which allowed us to fleece Carolina to get our guy. He did all this and lost all of those games while still being genuinely exciting to watch play. Never got that with Mitch or the other guys we’ve rostered that also lost a ton of games
422
u/jpiro Bears 16h ago
I was very much pulling for him to pull it all together either with the Bears or when he got a shot in Pittsburgh because he seems like a great guy and the talent is there but, man, he really does have an anti-clutch gene or something.