(670 The Score) We didn't think they'd win, and we still aren't entirely sure if the Bears know which quarterback matters.
They lost to the Rams, 34-14, in their season opener Sunday night, but the fact that Justin Fields entered the game on the fourth play has to be the most positive possible news on a night that was predictably difficult for troubling reasons. That Fields came in here and there and ran some typically over-complicated Matt Nagy plays -- and scored on one -- was more than just cold comfort at the outset of their first 17-game journey to somewhere. It was a grudging admission that his time nears.
And the Bears will need dynamic playmaking to overcome some scary defensive issues.
Andy Dalton is Andy Dalton is Andy Dalton: ad nauseam, ad infinitum, ad astra. He's fine until he's a little better than fine, until he's very far from fine, in some order. That a microcosm of him happened in the game Sunday isn't particularly interesting, because it's just who he is and has been, despite all of the latest singalong from Halas Hall to be echoed by expected friends.
Fields is more The Guy than ever, now, regardless of anything else, and now we're left from this one with concerns on the other side of the ball.
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Eddie Jackson is picking up where he left off from last season, not playing hard enough. It's no small thing for a professional athlete's effort to be called out in this space, mind you, and Jackson's failure to even touch Van Jefferson down on his 67-yard touchdown was followed by an apparent mental miscue on Cooper Kupp's 56-yard walk-in and a handful of misread angles and weak finishes of plays. If Bears coaches mean all their boilerplate coachiness, his job has to be on the line no matter what he's paid, which is a lot.
And that gets us to the cipher that is Khalil Mack.
Do something. Anything. One assisted tackle isn't wrecking a game, it's watching it.
We know Robert Quinn was an expensive mistake, one that cost them Kyle Fuller. We know the fact that Alec Ogletree accidentally made the team while on vacation was a bad sign, that Danny Trevathan is close to done, Akiem Hicks wants out and Eddie Goldman exists in some netherworld of availability.
But if he's Khalil Pujols, this whole thing is on a different track.
And it's one that needs Fields right now. If he's good enough that you know how much he can stress an opponent as a mere gimmick, just let it rip already. What's more, David Montgomery is making good on his promise that his performance in the second half of last season would more than carry over, and he looks like the kind of load back who can help a team with the lead dominate the clock and call plays from a position of strength.
Yet that's still a concern with the inevitable annual cascade of injuries on the offensive line that has apparently begun, while observing Nagy's desultory play-calling that never seems built to exploit opposing weaknesses over the course of an entire game. There's some good stuff in here for the Bears, but it still always feels like such a massive operation to extract it. A reasonable person can see a quarterback with unique gifts and a hard-ass running back lifting everything around them, but that would take less complication and fewer self-imposed crosswinds.
And a defense.
But Justin Fields played -- and early. He played, which means they have to know.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Rahimi Show on middays from 9 a.m. until noon on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
