Chicago Bears: Justin Fields will save Ryan Pace’s job by Vincent Parise

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Chicago Bears (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

The Chicago Bears stole the show on Day 1 of the 2021 NFL Draft and traded up for Justin Fields.

What a night it was for Ryan Pace, Matt Nagy, the Bears and their entire fan base.

In a move that many are already calling the “steal of the draft,” the Bears moved up and selected Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields at pick no. 11 overall.

The Bears traded this year’s no. 20 pick, next year’s first-round selection, along with a fourth and fifth rounder to move up nine spots and get their franchise quarterback. Fields is officially a Bear, and the fans are understandably excited.

It still feels surreal that Pace made the move to go up and get his guy in Fields. It’s almost reminiscent of the morning fans woke up to the news that Khalil Mack was a Bear. Similarly to the Mack trade, and his impact on the defense as a whole, Fields will impact the offense.

Every offensive starter for the Chicago Bears is immediately leveled up due to the Justin Fields pick.

The Bears’ biggest problem for the last few years has been their inability to score points. Their offense has not been able to sustain drives and, in two out of the last three seasons, the playoff berths have been one and done exits.

Fields has big-game experience. He’s been there and performed well on college football’s biggest stage. He’s played against the best of the best in teams like Clemson and Alabama, and he’s played at a high level. Now, he gets to play in the black and blue division — a division where the Bears’ quarterback play is typically the butt of many jokes.

The jokes end here, folks. Fields is the second-best quarterback in this draft, and has been for a long time now. Despite Zach Wilson and Trey Lance going ahead of him, the Bears landed the second-best passer to Trevor Lawrence. Pace worked his magic and pounced when he had the opportunity.

Now, the Bears have plenty of reason to be hopeful about a playoff run in 2021 — and years to come. The offense is going to level up in a big way this coming season. Specifically, Fields is going to impact these three players more than others.

Next: 1. Darnell Mooney

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The Bears drafted a quarterback. And the fans are … actually happy.

The Bears traded for a quarterback! Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser and Mark Potash break down how it happened — and wonder whether, between Justin Fields and Aaron Rodgers, this is the happiest Bears fans have been in years.

New episodes of “Halas Intrigue” will be published regularly with accompanying stories collected on the podcast’s hub page. You can also listen to “Halas Intrigue” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Luminary, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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One person was critically wounded in a shooting Thursday on the Dan Ryan expressway near 71st Street.

Eight people were wounded in shootings across Chicago Thursday, including a male critically hurt in an attack on the Dan Ryan expressway.

About 5:40 p.m., three people were traveling in a vehicle on I-94 when someone fired shots near 71st Street, according to preliminary information from Illinois State Police.

A male passenger, whose age was not immediately known, was shot and taken in critical condition to the University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago Fire officials and state police said.

The male driver and female passenger were not injured, state police said.

Thursday night, two men were wounded in a shooting in Brighton Park on the Southwest Side.

The men were walking on the sidewalk about 8:15 p.m. in the 3500 block of South Francisco Avenue when a dark-colored vehicle pulled up near one of the men and someone inside began firing shots, police said.

A 26-year-old man was shot in the chest and stomach and was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition, police said. Another man, 61, was struck in the leg and was taken in good condition to St. Anthony Hospital, police said. He was not the intended target, according to police.

Two other men were wounded in a shooting in Lawndale on the West Side.

A 46-year-old man was found on the front porch of a home about 7 p.m. in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue, police said. He was shot in the shoulder and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition, police said. Another man, 37, self-transported to the same hospital in good condition, according to police.

A 31-year-old man was seriously hurt in a shooting in Austin on the West Side.

The man was getting out of a vehicle about 6:55 p.m. in the 200 block of South Lotus Avenue when someone approached him and fired shots, police said. He was struck in the neck and was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition, police said.

In the day’s first reported attack, two men were shot inside a home in Austin on the West Side.

The men, 23 and 21, were inside the residence in the 5200 block of West Congress Parkway about 6:15 a.m. when someone they knew fired at them through the window from the alley, police said.

The 23-year-old was struck in the back and brought to Stroger Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, police said. The younger man was struck in the left knee and taken to the same hospital in good condition.

Three people were shot, one fatally, citywide Wednesday.

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The Bears envision Fields as their long-term answer but still plan on Dalton opening the season as their starter.

They’ve said this before.

Hours after trading up to draft Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields at No. 11, general manager Ryan Pace said free agent signee Andy Dalton remains the Bears’ starter — just like they said of Mike Glennon when they drafted Mitch Trubisky in 2017.

To be fair, Glennon did open that season as the starter, but played his way out of the job after four games.

“Matt [Nagy] has spoken to Andy Dalton tonight; that communication and clarity for us is really important,” Pace said. “Andy is our starter, and we’re gonna have a really good plan in place to develop Justin and do what’s best for our organization and win games.”

The Bears signed Dalton for one year, $10 million and assured him he’d be their starter. It was a crucial part of their recruiting pitch because Dalton had a strong offer from the 49ers.

Pace cracked the door open slightly for Fields to beat out Dalton, but still indicated the plan is to start Dalton and have Fields learn behind him.

“We just have to let it play out,” Pace said. “One of the best feelings in the world would be, ‘Hey, we’re rolling, we’re playing really good football, we’re winning and we’re looking over there and we’re seeing this guy and we all know — everyone in the building knows — hey, we’ve got a guy.

“As these guys come into this, even all the experiences they have at the college level, growing and watching tape, reading defenses, working in the huddle… It’s just so new for these guys, but it’ll be a daily process, a daily evaluation. But we’re excited to let that play out.”

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Alzolay allowed two runs over a career-high six innings and earned his first quality start of his career in the Cubs’ 9-3 win over the Braves

ATLANTA — The Cubs have given starter Adbert Alzolay a chance to grow at the major-league level, and after a rocky season debut, Alzolay has started to come into his own. He entered Thursday’s game in an attempt to play stopper and end the Cubs’ five-game losing streak.

While that would be a lot to ask of many young starters, Alzolay looked up for the task against a Braves team that averaged eight runs per game over the first three games of the series.

The Cubs’ right-hander continued to show his steady development in Thursday’s 9-3 win and is beginning to look like the starter the Cubs always envisioned him being.

“I think his stuff, I’ll put it up there with anybody in baseball,” said Matt Duffy, who was 2-for-4 on Thursday. “Just the way it moves. I faced him in live BP right before the season started and was thoroughly impressed with the pure stuff.”

Alzolay got into very little trouble against Atlanta and was aggressive in the strike zone with his sinker, slider and four-seam fastball. Braves hitters didn’t look very comfortable against Alzolay over his career-high six innings of work.

“I think he’s just getting a little more consistent with what he wants to do the hitters and the trust that he has in his stuff,” manager David Ross said. “I’m really seeing the same pitcher, I think there’s just a little bit more leeway from my end and the ability to watch and continue to build confidence in him that he has and I have and our group has letting him go a little bit deeper today.

“He continues to build that confidence and has established himself as one of our really good starters.”

The six innings of work was a major accomplishment for Alzolay. He struck out six batters and walked just one, throwing a career-high 94 pitches in the process. It was the first quality start of his career.

“When you can command and control a pitch on both sides of the plate, it will open so many doors for you,” Alzolay said. “Because you have the hitter just now looking at one spot, but you got the hitter wondering, ‘Oh, this guy can go to the other side of the plate with the same pitch. They start thinking at the plate. So for me, it’s just keep getting better at commanding the pitch and just keep attacking the hitters.”

The Cubs needed an outing like this from one of their starters. With with the exception of Trevor Williams on Tuesday, no other starter had a quality outing in Atlanta.

Cubs starting pitchers allowed 16 earned runs against the hot-hitting Braves during the four-game series. All but four of those runs came in starts by right-handers Zach Davies and Kyle Hendricks, who have left a lot to be desired in April.

Davies and Hendricks were supposed to be the two consistent pieces of the rotation, but so far this season, they’ve been not only bad but two of the worst starters in baseball, allowing a combined 39 earned runs.

The lack of quality starts takes a toll after a while, and Cubs’ relievers have been warming up far too often in the fourth and fifth innings. The rotation will have to start going longer before the struggles begin to leak into the bullpen.

“I mean, it was huge for me that I was able to throw my first quality start in the big leagues today,” Alzolay said. “As a team, I feel like we needed it. We haven’t been as good as everyone was expecting as starting pitchers, but tonight, I felt it was good as a team and for the starters that I went out and gave the team six innings.”

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If Justin Fields was nervous, he didn’t show it. If the Ohio State quarterback was using each team passing on him during Thursday night’s draft as motivation for his rookie season, he didn’t let on.

But it was clear, as he sat in the living room at his parents’ home in Kennesaw, Ga., that Fields was surprised he lasted long enough for the Bears to trade up and draft him.

“I mean I’ve gone through situations where I haven’t been chosen — and I think the world has seen the outcome of that,” he said. “But my goal now is not to worry about those teams. Those teams have nothing to do with me. My goal is to, you know, if we play that team, to beat them. So I’m not worried about the draft. The draft is over for me. For me personally, I’m ready to get to work.”

Bears general manager Ryan Pace paid dearly to find out the result. To get from No. 20 to No. 11, he sent the Giants his first-round picks both this year and next, plus a fourth-round pick in 2022 and a fifth-rounder in 2021.

In doing so, Pace bet his career on the 6-2, 227-pounder’s strong right arm. He knows better than most that a shock trade is no guarantee of success — Mitch Trubisky, the last quarterback for whom Pace traded up to draft, simply wasn’t good enough to last more than four years as the team’s next quarterback hope.

Now Fields holds that title. He’s the latest in a line of players since Sid Luckman — including Andy Dalton, whom the Bears gave a one-year, $10 million deal in March — that have, with rare exception, disappointed Bears fans.

Fields said he’s built to handle the pressure.

“Just the way I carry myself, just the way I care about the game, the grit I have, the determination I have to be great,” said Fields, who performed in front of Bears coach Matt Nagy at his pro day this month and befriended him during Zoom interviews. “I think nobody kind of has the story that I have.

“So just everything inside of me, just wanting to be a great quarterback, wanting to be a franchise quarterback. And just me dreaming for this moment my whole life. So I just think all of those intangibles, my work ethic. And all that together will, of course, be different for me.”

Fields stayed home to play at Georgia, appearing in 12 games as a freshman while backing up Jake Fromm. He received a waiver to transfer to Ohio State and play immediately, though, on the basis that a Bulldogs athlete had been overheard using a slur about him while cheering at a football game.

He starred immediately at Ohio State, throwing 40 touchdowns and three interceptions in his sophomore year. He was named second-team All-America and Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year.

In eight games this year, he threw 22 touchdowns and six interceptions, repeating as the Big Ten’s best offensive player. He left school having lost two games ever as the starter — both in the playoffs.

Earlier this week, NFL Network reported that teams were made aware that Fields has been managing epilepsy throughout his career. His family members diagnosed with epilepsy grew out of it.

All five projected first-round passers were gone before the night’s midway point, but not in the order that most experts presumed. The Jaguars took Clemson star Trevor Lawrence first overall, as expected, followed by the Jets selecting BYU’s Zach Wilson.

The 49ers, who traded three first-round picks in March to secure the No. 3 spot, sent the first shock through the Cleveland crowd when they took North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance. He played just one Football Championship Subdivision game in 15 months and was never offered an FBS scholarship to play quarterback.

When the Giants were on the clock at No. 11, the Bears pounced. They got Giants general manager Dave Gettleman to trade back for the first time in his career, which spanned six drafts and 55 picks. During the offseason, Gettleman said he’d only move back for value — “I’m not getting fleeced,” he said — and the Bears provided just that.

For all the Bears gave up, Pace at least got to keep his second- and third-round picks this season, allowing him to attempt to fill a starting lineup with holes remaining from a cap-strapped free agency period.

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Jeff Badu is 28 years old, a licensed CPA and a millionaire.

The latter he achieved by age 25, despite zero financial literacy education growing up.

Had he learned about money at a younger age, he feels it wouldn’t have taken him as long.

So now the millennial, a resident of Uptown and founder and CEO of Badu Enterprises, LLC, a multinational firm with a successful real estate arm — which began with the purchase of one unit in 2017 and now owns 118 units — wants to help youth like him achieve the same.

His year-old Badu Foundation is accepting inner city applicants ages 6-18 for four-week financial literacy programs that are accompanied by a $500 college scholarship.

“My family has always been entrepreneurs, math folks. We just have a love for business,” said Badu, who attended the Chicago Public Schools’ McCutcheon Elementary and Uplift Community High School, where he matriculated in 2010 with an honors GPA of 4.23.

The Ghanaian immigrant, whose parents emigrated to Chicago with their three children when he was eight years old, went on to obtain both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2014 and 2015.

“Long story short, when I was younger, I unfortunately surrounded myself with the wrong crowd, which ultimately could have gotten me into some really big trouble,” Badu said.

“I didn’t have someone to teach me about money and finances and prepare me to live the best abundant life possible. With all of the violence going on in Chicago with our youth, I guarantee you that if they had more financial education and empowerment, they would be able to stay out of trouble. They just want to sustain themselves and get out of poverty.”

Provided

His father is a real estate developer in Ghana, his mother, a nurse. He’s the only boy and middle child, with two sisters. Growing up in Uptown, it was at age 16, as he was headed down the wrong path, that his parents took him for a visit to their native country.

That visit, and the poverty he witnessed, proved life changing. He came back determined not to throw away his opportunities, and more importantly, to be able to help someday.

“To be honest, it was God. That trip really opened my eyes and allowed me to see the light and to see my purpose in life,” the soft-spoken young man said.

“I saw people struggling. I wanted to be part of the solution, not the problem. I wanted to find resources to help people get out of that scarcity and live abundantly. It was a deep moment for me. From that moment on, I worked 10 times harder and got myself educated.”

In high school, he’d been on the soccer team, in band and After School Matters programs.

In college, he was vice president of the school’s National Association of Black Accountants chapter and spent the summer of his junior and senior years interning at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago, which hired him upon graduation.

Provided

But Badu would only stay one year. He’d started his tax preparation business at age 18, and by the time he left PwC, he had built a client base of 100, from family and friends.

Badu Tax Services, LLC, was launched September 2016; Badu Investments, LLC, in April 2017, and the 501c3 foundation in April 2020. In a pandemic, its inaugural program only drew three students. The foundation has set a goal of serving 30 students this year.

Badu and his team teach the youth the value of saving, budgeting, investing and starting college savings accounts that are launched with the $500 scholarship from the foundation.

“So we basically teach them the importance of applying for scholarships, provide them with resources to find and apply for scholarships, and then give them the first $500. Our students will be able to reapply every year, and each program they complete will garner another $500. When they enroll in college, all those funds will go toward tuition,” Badu said.

“I want to help our youth think differently. We only allow students residing in low-income communities in Chicago to apply. I wish I knew some of these things much younger, because I could have gotten more of a head start in life.”

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