Hoge's 10 Bears Things: Justin Fields likely to start Sunday
The Bears are back to 1-1 after a win over the Bengals that wasn’t as close as the 20-17 final score suggested. It also appears that the keys to Matt Nagy’s offense are being turned over to Justin Fields after Andy Dalton suffered a left knee injury Sunday. With that in mind, let’s jump into this week’s 10 Bears Things.
While the Bears did not provide any specifics on Dalton’s injury Monday, head coach Matt Nagy did say it is not a torn ACL. The NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport then reported that it was a bone bruise.
I’m far from a doctor, but this is the rare injury I can share some first-hand insight on because I suffered a severe bone bruise in my left knee playing basketball in April of 2019. Like Dalton’s, it was a non-contact injury and the doctors told me I was very fortunate I did not tear my ACL. When it happened, everyone on the court thought I blew out my knee.
Bone bruises can happen when the muscles do their job and absorb the impact of the blow to the knee, keeping the ligaments intact. But that doesn’t always stop the femur and the tibia from hitting each other, which creates the bruise.
And trust me, it’s extremely painful.
In my case, I was given a 4-8 week recovery time. After about three weeks, I got back on the court to test it and quickly realized I couldn’t make any sudden movements. Ultimately, it was three months before I could play full games again, but I’m far from an NFL quarterback so comparing timelines is probably very silly.
With that in mind:
1. Dalton’s bone bruise might not be as bad.
2. My MRI showed I also had a small tear in a muscle that had to heal. Nagy said the results of Dalton’s MRI were still pending to determine the full scope of the damage.
3. I did not have access to the constant treatment and recovery that NFL players do. That makes a difference.
Perhaps it’s possible Dalton makes a quick recovery, but it sure seems like a return by Sunday is far fetched. That feeling was echoed by Dr. David Chao (@ProFootballDoc) on Twitter, who said “in a best case scenario of a bone bruise, Dalton would miss several weeks.”
So while the Bears created some confusion Monday about who the starter would be if Dalton is healthy, it’s probably a moot point. All signs point to Fields getting his first NFL start.
Starting Fields against the Cleveland Browns’ defense isn’t exactly the ideal scenario for the Bears, but it should help if he gets a full week of practice with the starters — especially the offensive line.
There were three false starts while Fields was in the game Sunday and he took full responsibility for two of them. He barely worked with the first-team offensive line and center Sam Mustipher in training camp, so it’s not surprising there were a few cadence issues.
“There’s some communication that goes down. If the play clock is running down, we have a mechanism that we can use and you got to be clear with that,” Nagy said Monday. “We have some different cadences. We’re going to get the guys together and just talk through that and figure out the whys behind all of that. But again, some of that is part of the growing pains, right?”
No one is expecting this thing to be perfect right away and the false starts should definitely get filed away under “growing pains” that will improve with more experience. The same goes for recognizing a bluffed blitz from a linebacker who then drops back into coverage and picks off the pass. It wasn’t a good play for Fields, but now he has seen an NFL linebacker — in this case, Logan Wilson — take three rush steps upfield at the snap and then stop on a dime and backpedal into coverage.
This ain’t the Big Ten anymore.
It wasn’t all bad for Fields. The important thing is he didn’t look lost. There were mistakes, but he didn’t seem overwhelmed by the moment.
Overall, I think he is seeing the field well. I just think he needs to get the ball out a touch quicker. Watching routes develop from the press box, I thought there was a deep throw to Marquise Goodwin in the first quarter that arrived a tad late and I thought the ball to Darnell Mooney on 3rd & goal from the 4-yard-line would have been a touchdown had he seen it develop a split-second earlier. Instead, the ball landed out of bounds.
There were other examples of Fields reading coverages correctly, including when the Bengals dropped out of a two-deep shell and rotated into a single-high safety, creating a 1-on-1 deep ball to Allen Robinson. It should have been a 35-yard touchdown, but Robinson dropped it. There was also a deep-out to Mooney that went off the receiver's finger tips and could have been caught. The stats certainly would have looked different if those two plays were made.
No one hyped up Jaylon Johnson more during training camp than his teammates.
“I’ll tell y’all again he’s going to be a top five cornerback. I mean that and I’m telling y’all straight-face,” Bears safety Tashaun Gipson said earlier this month.
Well, through two games, Johnson sure looks like a top five cornerback. He leads the league with five passes defended and added his first career interception Sunday too.
Johnson started Week 1 as a rookie in 2020 and looked pretty good, but durability was a question mark coming out of college and he missed the last four games, including the playoff game, with a shoulder injury.
The former second-round pick sure looks healthy now though and he appears to be on his way toward a breakout season. Couple that with linebacker Roquan Smith, who is already one of the best defensive players in the league, and the Bears have a couple young, rising stars taking over an aging defense.
Back during free agency, I referred to former Cardinals defensive tackle Angelo Blackson as a sneaky addition for the Bears. It seems like every year Bears GM Ryan Pace is able to find an under-utilized or under-valued defensive lineman around the league and turn him into a valuable piece in Chicago. Blackson appears to be that guy this year.
Through two games, Blackson has been great and was especially active against the Bengals. He was constantly in the backfield or swallowing up ball carriers in the run game. He even threw in an interception off a tipped pass from linebacker Alec Ogletree.
With Eddie Goldman dealing with his knee injury, Blackson has provided really good depth on the interior and the pairing with Akiem Hicks and Bilal Nichols has to be among the best in the league right now.
One thing that was startling to see Sunday was the lack of involvement of the tight ends in the Bears’ offense. The tight end stat line looked like this:
Cole Kmet: 1 target, 1 reception, 0 yards.
That was it. Nothing to Jimmy Graham or Jesse James.
Technically, Kmet also had a deeper third down catch called back because of an offensive pass interference call on himself, but even if that had counted, it was a rough day for the tight ends.
“Not enough targets yesterday and they need to be more involved. I'm well aware of that. That's my fault for that,” Nagy said. “I don't want to say that’s never gonna happen again, but that's not enough.”
Nagy added that there were a couple plays called for tight ends that the Bengals took away. We’ll see if they are more involved in Cleveland.
The initial re-watch of the game Monday morning confirmed what I thought Sunday: the offensive line played well enough to win.
Don’t confuse that with dominance or anything, but expectations were admittedly low coming into the season and the line has been OK through two weeks.
39-year-old Jason Peters definitely exceeded expectations Sunday. Yes, he allowed the pressure on the nearly disastrous strip-sack on Fields, but otherwise played very well. There were a number of times the Bears left him isolated with a 1-on-1 block on the outside and he executed with no problem while moving well. You still have to wonder about the durability through a 17-game season — and Peters appeared to be dealing with some kind of finger injury Sunday — but he’s off to a decent start and rookie reinforcements could be on the way later in the season with Larry Borom and Teven Jenkins.
Nagy revealed Monday that defensive coordinator Sean Desai received the game ball after Sunday’s win.
“Just his resiliency of handling the adversity of that first game,” Nagy said when asked what he learned about Desai in the last week. “Being out there on a Sunday night and having that happen with our defense and he never wavered, he never panicked. He was the same. That's the key — when you're the same person when things are really good or things are really bad, how do you handle that when the storm hits. He stayed calm. And even when we were doing pretty well yesterday, he still was calm. That's why we gave him the game ball yesterday.”
The Browns are 1-1 after nearly upsetting the Chiefs in Week 1 and managing a 31-21 win over the Texans Sunday. But you wonder if that game would have finished differently had Texans quarterback Tyrod Taylor not gotten hurt.
The Browns will likely be facing their second straight rookie quarterback after Davis Mills had to finish Sunday’s game for the Texans, but Fields brings a lot more mobility to the table. We’ll see if Fields’ threat to run will limit a pass rush led by Myles Garrett.
On offense, the Browns will be without Jarvis Landry, who suffered a knee injury Sunday. Quarterback Baker Mayfield left with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder, but returned.
Well, here we are. Justin Fields will likely get his first NFL start in Cleveland and it’s time to really learn about Matt Nagy. This is his hand-picked guy to run his offense and we’re going to get a glimpse at what that looks like.
Granted, Nagy isn’t going to throw the whole playbook at Fields this week and the game plan will be tailored to what the rookie feels comfortable with, but there are very few excuses left on that side of the ball. David Montgomery is an outstanding running back, Allen Robinson and Darnell Mooney are plenty good at receiver, the tight ends should be good enough, and the offensive line is functioning at an OK level. Now the talented — and inexperienced — quarterback is in place.
We’re not going to see the finished product in Cleveland, but we’re going to get an initial taste. And with a full week of preparation, the results should be better than what we saw Sunday against the Bengals.
