CHICAGO (670 The Score) – If it makes you feel any better, the Bears' 33-22 loss to the 49ers on Sunday doesn't matter. Whether it's Matt Nagy or Chris Tabor talking in circles around that reality, the truth is easier to see than the divots in Soldier Field – the Bears are, at best, an average team with the worst passing offense in football and an aging, unreliable defense.
Heading into November, they're two games under .500, four games back in the NFC North and have one of the hardest remaining schedules for the remainder of the season. All their loss did Sunday was redirect some of the misplaced midseason optimism that lingers around mediocre teams like a bad hangover. The Bears were always going to lose a fifth game, and they'll lose their sixth, seventh and eighth ones too – it doesn't really make a difference which autumnal holiday those fall on.
Sunday was a net positive because rookie quarterback Justin Fields made it a net positive. He was 19-of-27 for 175 yards, one passing touchdown and an interception that came on a desperation throw late. He also rushed 10 times for 103 yards and a score.
If you're still waiting for the traditional "breakout game" from Fields, may I suggest you familiarize yourself with a Bears' offense that still hasn't scored more than 24 points in any game this year? And has to decide whether they want their right tackle to be a rookie who kind of plays there in practice sometimes or a second-year guy who has never played there at all? Fields' performance Sunday is what a breakout game looks like in a system that ranks 29th in DVOA. For a quarterback who's already faced too many unfair questions about his fit in the professional game, looking like the best player on a pro team before the halfway point of his rookie season ain't bad.
"Good football player," Tabor said of Fields after the game. "No. 1 improved today. I thought you saw he made plays with his legs, he led our team. I thought he threw the ball well. He gave us a chance, and obviously he's a special player. He made nothing into something and got us going there. Real pleased with him, and that's the story of a rookie quarterback. You saw a guy get better, so I am excited about that."
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There may be no louder moment on the lakefront all year than Fields' fourth-down touchdown scramble in the fourth quarter. After three quarters of watching field goals while their blood sugar crashed, the largely subdued Soldier Field crowd roared to life as Fields stopped on a dime on a rollout right, spun the other way back out of the pocket and hit the boosters for a 22-yard rushing score to pull Chicago within 23-22 with 9:32 remaining. Cairo Santos' first miss in 50 attempts kept the Bears from tying the game, but again, that didn't really matter. Fields now has his first signature play, one so powerful that it left Bears fans feeling hopeful after a game that featured their beloved defense getting scored on in seven out of eight drives.
"Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, that was awesome," Fields said of his touchdown run. "I was excited, as y'all could see. But I mean, yeah, it was awesome. Glad to celebrate with my teammates, and we're just gonna continue to get better, like I said. Of course, we didn't get the outcome that we wanted today, but we're just gonna get back and keep going."
No one is expecting Fields' progress to be consistently linear – Chicago still has games left against Arizona, Baltimore and Green Bay, after all – but he looked so much closer to the proverbial leap than he ever has before. He'll want the deep ball that he overthrew to Darnell Mooney back, but it's hard to complain about completing 70.4% of his passes, even if the yardage (175) was modest. And speaking of what doesn't matter, the one interception he threw was on an arm punt prayer in a two-score game that went off Mooney's hand.
This is all to say that the Bears have plenty of issues that need addressing, but their most crucial concern – the development of The Franchise – seems to be coming along just fine. See? Losing at home by 11 to a 2-4 football team isn't that bad!
"Sometimes you can't control things in life and you just have to keep going, keep going, keep going," Fields said. "So that's what I'm going to do – keep going."
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.
