The professional, regular season debut of Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Justin Fields was almost as bad as it could possibly get, but quite frankly by no fault of his own. Chicago was trounced by the Cleveland Browns, 26-6.
Let’s get this out of the way. There were a few incompletions that were thrown into decent coverage, but still accurate balls. Fields didn’t turn the ball over. However, he looked more and more rushed as the game went on — and that’s putting it lightly.
The Cleveland Browns sacked Fields nine times on Sunday, putting him under duress on almost every passing down the rookie took. Fields was running for his life from start to finish, and Nagy never even attempted to get his quarterback into a rhythm.
It wasn’t until the third quarter that Fields was given an opportunity for a play-action pass and a designed rollout. That is far too long to wait to give your young, mobile quarterback an opportunity to do what he does best.
The Chicago Bears have no choice but to fire head coach Matt Nagy after a historically bad loss.
When the clock hit zeros, the Bears ended with just one net passing yard — that’s it. In total, the Bears’ offense racked up just 47 yards. That’s the team’s second-fewest total offensive yardage since 1970.
For being an “offensive guru,” Nagy just ended up on the wrong side of franchise history.
It was an afternoon of utter embarrassment for Nagy and the Bears, and anyone who watched the game left feeling sorry for Fields. He wasn’t even given a chance.
One of the biggest culprits of getting Fields sacked is veteran Jason Peters, who was signed in hopes that the team would be able to endure losing rookie Teven Jenkins. Peters was beaten multiple times, including a couple of snaps where he didn’t even appear to know who he was supposed to block.
This is both on the player and coach. Nagy can’t possibly say the team had a good week of practice if he offensive linemen don’t have a clue who to block. The overall performance of the offensive line was one of the worst seen in NFL history.
Move on from Nagy right now. This is embarrassing and it feels purposeful
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) September 26, 2021
One of the major, striking takeaways from this game was the fact that Nagy did not allow Fields some quick throws to try and get him going early on. It seemed almost purposeful that Nagy wasn’t allowing his rookie the same type of rhythm that Andy Dalton began the last two games with.
