(670 The Score) Bears quarterback Justin Fields’ criticism of the team’s coaching staff last week wasn’t nearly as big of a deal inside the locker room as it was in the national conversation.
In cornerback Jaylon Johnson’s mind, Fields’ request of the coaching staff to help him play less “robotic” football was a public example of what happens behind closed doors on a regular basis. Johnson also thought it was a completely fair comment from Fields, who responded “could be coaching” when asked why he was overthinking on the field.
And the reason it was fair was because everyone associated with the Bears should be held to the same high standard, Johnson said.
“The way I see it, we’re all in this together,” Johnson said on the Parkins & Spiegel Show on Monday evening, a day after the Bears fell to 0-3 with a 41-10 loss to the Chiefs. “Granted, of course, there’s ways to go about it, but I feel like there’s nothing wrong with players calling out coaches. Coaches call players out every day. It’s part of their job. And I think on the contrary to that, there has to be some accountability by the coaches. Now granted, there’s ways to do it. You don’t just put anybody out. You don’t just put your teammate out there. If something goes on between you and your teammate or something like that, you just don’t say, ‘Oh, he messed it up.’ You don’t point that finger directly. But to me, there’s nothing wrong with, in a sense, of a player being able to say, ‘Coaches got to be better.’ I mean, if things were flipped, the coaches would say, ‘The players got to play better. The players got to execute better on third downs. Or the players got to do X, Y, Z.’ So it’s like, the coaches have that same responsibility too. They’re not superior to the players or anything like that. We are all here with the same goal, and that’s to bring a championship to Chicago football. Everybody gets held accountable. Everybody can get called out. Everybody can get pushed to get better. Nobody, to me, is exempt from it.
“I don’t like it having to be like, ‘He’s the quarterback, he just has to be like…’
“Nah, at the end of the day, Justin is a man too. He’s a 24-year-old man with the whole city of Chicago on his back. It’s like everything is pushed onto him. He takes that 98% of the time. The one time he says, ‘Maybe it can be coaching, maybe it can be me, maybe it can be whoever else,’ I think that’s OK.
“Coaches can be a factor in it as well … That’s part of being a man in this industry, is being able to be held accountable, being able to learn. I don’t think that coaches are exempt from that. I think it’s OK for players to call coaches out as well, but of course, there’s a way to do it.”