The Chicago Bears lost some talent at wide receiver but are hoping the depth works out to their advantage for quarterback Justin Fields
Elite wide receivers are expensive, and for the Chicago Bears, they’re hard to come by right now. Allen Robinson leaving the Bears receiving core to go to the Los Angeles Rams this offseason has the Bears looking at their roster without a definite number 1 wide receiver.
Darnell Mooney was the best wide receiver on the roster that’s returning this season, but many analysts don’t know if he’s a number 2 receiver on most NFL teams. Second-year quarterback Justin Fields was gifted Velus Jones Jr. in the 2022 NFL draft’s third round. This offseason, the Bears acquired Byron Pringle and a slew of other wide receivers in free agency to bring the depth at the position to 14 by OTA’s.
Fields, in an interview with Scott Polacek for a Bleacher Report exclusive interview, acknowledged the Bears don’t have an elite play at wide receiver this year. Here’s what Fields told Polacek:
“We don’t have an Odell [Beckham Jr.] or a Cooper Kupp on our team, but at the end of the day I think if everybody is on their P’s and Q’s, and we’re on top of everything and not making mistakes, the players we have right now are good enough,” he told Bleacher Report in an exclusive interview. “The front office thinks that, too. The fans outside of the facility, they don’t know what’s going on at practice. Just because we don’t have a big-name guy, doesn’t mean those guys aren’t talented. I have plenty of confidence in myself and my teammates that we’re going to get the job done.”
Good enough
Fields understands that with the lack of elite play, the pressure will be on him and the wide receivers they have to be near damn perfect on every route and throw this season with little margin for error. “Good enough” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for an NFL group. It certainly isn’t as comforting as say, great.
To make the NFL, players who make rosters for training camp have to have talent. That’s not much for the quarterback to say, because it’s doubtful he’d call out members of the unit to the media that would cause division in the locker room.
While Bears fans aren’t seeing what’s going on in practice outside of a few tweets—exceptions being the pass rookie Trestan Ebner dropped in practice last week—they can read reports of “struggles” the offense had during voluntary minicamp.
Justin Fields dropping dimes on Matt Eberflus’s birthday. #Bears pic.twitter.com/Gff4xhN6qb
— Mark Carman (@thecarm) May 17, 2022
It’s great that Fields thinks they can get the job done, even if he admitted the Bears’ best receiver isn’t as good as the Rams trio of Robinson, Kupp, and Beckham Jr. But a player as smart as Fields knows his skills are not being elevated to what they could be with an elite receiver such as Beckham Jr. (Note, Fields used the Super Bowl-winning Rams has his example, a team that pulled all the stops to make Mathew Stafford look competent again.) Beckham Jr. would be the perfect player for the Bears to go after this offseason if they can negotiate with him in free agency.
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