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After three seasons and 40 games with the Chicago Bears, quarterback Justin Fields will be spending the 2024 NFL season wearing Black & Gold.
The Bears traded their starting quarterback to the Pittsburgh Steelers today. According to ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter, the Bears will receive a conditional sixth-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft that can rise as high as a fourth-round pick based on playing time this coming season.
In the 2021 NFL Draft, the Bears traded up from No. 20 to No. 11 overall to take the talented, playmaking quarterback from Ohio State. The team’s initial plan was for him to sit and learn as a rookie, but after some early struggles in 2021 season, the Bears gave him the starting job in Week 3, which he has held ever since aside from the occasional injury absence.
Fields went 2-8 as a starter in 2021, completing just under 59-percent of his passes that year.
In 2022, he showed some signs of improvement, doubling his touchdown rate while turning into a dangerous running threat with the ball in his hands. Fields finished ninth in the MVP voting that season, but wins didn’t follow and he went just 3-12 as a starter that year.
Despite the Bears’ best efforts to give Fields some weapons in 2023, he did not make the leap in his third NFL season and went just 5-8 as a starter.
While the Bears could have stuck with Fields for the fourth year of his rookie contract, they received the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft thanks to last year’s pre-draft trade with the Carolina Panthers.
The opportunity to take USC quarterback and former Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams was far too tantalizing and it seems clear that the Bears are ready to take a risk with Williams rather than keep trying to develop Fields.
Fields now joins a Steelers team that recently signed quarterback Russell Wilson to a one-year prove-it deal. According to reports, Fields has already been told that Wilson is the starter, but will get a chance to develop.
When one door closes, another one opens.