Matt Eberflus believes Justin Fields took a step forward in Bears’ brutal loss
The optimism surrounding the Bears’ encouraging Week 5 loss was short-lived as Chicago put up a stinker in their 12-7 defeat to the Commanders on Thursday Night Football.
Quarterback Justin Fields had another rough outing, where he was under duress all night and didn’t get a lot of help from his receivers, who were dropping passes. Fields himself had his share of mistakes, including missing a wide open Ryan Griffin for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.
Fields took hit after hit — where there were times you held your breath wondering if this was the hit that would sideline him — behind the league’s worst offensive line. The offense had three chances to score inside Washington’s 5-yard line, and they failed to come away with any points.
When Bears coach Matt Eberflus was asked if he think Fields took a step back in this game, he countered with his belief that Fields “took a step forward.” In a loss. An ugly loss.
So what was his reasoning?
“Because of the toughness, the ability — for me, the ability to take the ball and drive it down at the very end to give us a chance to win it,” Eberflus said. “That’s to me what was the improvement. Okay?
“Was there other moments that we need to clean up and offense needs to clean up? Sure. But we have the drives down there, and if we punch those in the game is a different game. That’s 21 points. Right?
“So for me, that was really inspiring to watch him doing that at the very end. To take us down to win it at the very end and came up short. Got to do better job next time.”
In a lot of ways, it was everything we didn’t get to see in last week’s loss to the Vikings. Fields was leading the Bears down field to potentially tie (or win) the game until Ihmir Smith-Marsette’s fumble took the opportunity.
On that final drive against Washington, Fields marched the Bears 61 yards down the field, which included using his legs on a 39-yard run to set them up at the 5-yard line. Unfortunately, they couldn’t punch it in on four tries, which included Fields missing a wide open Ryan Griffin for the score and two dropped touchdowns.
Despite the offensive shortcomings, we continue to see the special when it comes to Fields. But the concern is the Bears could be wasting that talent.
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