Bears QB Justin Fields shares improvement goals for OTAs
Fields reveals where he wants to improve this summer originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Justin Fields showed he has what it takes to be a premiere playmaker in the NFL last season. There’s no question he earned more time to develop with the Bears, even though the team controlled the No. 1 pick in the draft and GM Ryan Poles had the opportunity to select a QB of his own, rather than riding with someone picked by his predecessor.
But Fields is still not a finished product. He’ll be the first to tell you that. For all his success rushing the football, or making off-schedule throws in the intermediate passing game, he was surprisingly inaccurate on throws that are typically considered layups. Screen passes would hit the dirt, or balls would sail over the head of pass catchers wide open in the end zone. Other times, Fields would hold the ball too long and either take an unnecessary sack or miss the window to complete a chunk pass. The Bears have drilled Fields on his footwork since the start of last season to try to clean up that short game accuracy. Footwork is something that quarterbacks work on throughout their careers, so that’s unsurprising. On Tuesday, after day two of the team’s OTAs, Fields said he’s working on speeding up his processing, too.
“Going through my progressions fast,” Fields said when asked what he was focusing on at this early stage of the summer program.
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Last year, Fields noted he learned a bit from sitting on the sidelines and watching Trevor Siemian. One play in particular in Week 12’s matchup against the Jets led to a eureka moment.
“He checked the ball to Darrynton and he got a 30-yard gain,” Fields said in the week after that game. “I think that was one of my favorite plays of the game.”
It was Siemian’s speed working through all his reads that amazed Fields.
“Just how he got to him on time, like usually you don’t get to that checkdown on time like that.”
It was also a lesson that he doesn’t need to do everything on his own. If Fields can get the ball into another playmaker’s hands early, it can lead to big results.
Fields believes he’s primed to speed things up this year.
“It's the first season I'm going into where it's my second year knowing the offense, so definitely feel more comfortable in it, just with my reads and stuff like that, just seeing what the defense is doing and stuff like that. It's truly amazing when you have that feeling going in, knowing where your guys are going to be, more comfortable with the footwork stuff. It's been great.”
