The next step for Bears and Justin Fields: go deep

The Bears offense is incomplete.

“If you want to have success in the NFL, you’re always going to have to be a threat to stretch the defense vertically,” quarterback Justin Fields said. “So you have to take shots downfield, so [the defense is] not all up in your grill.”

It’s not enough to attempt them, though. The Bears actually have to start completing them.

Fields threw four passes beyond 20 yards in the air in Sunday’s 49-29 loss to the Cowboys — and all four were incomplete. He was 1-for-2 against the Patriots, 2-for-5 against the Commanders and 1-for-4 against the Vikings.

The Bears already can attack a defense sideline to sideline with their run game and the passes they throw based off of them. Now they need to stretch it end zone to end zone.

“You’ve got play-action pass, you’ve got movement passes that are out of pocket–you stretch the horizontal part of the field,” head coach Matt Eberflus said Monday. “But I think it’s important that you stretch the vertical part. Not only on the sides by the numbers, but the middle part.”

Fields is getting his chances. The Bears are successful on 68% of their pass block attempts according to ESPN’s team pass block win rate metric, ranking third in the NFL. Nonetheless, the Bears are tied for last in the NFL with 634 air yards, which measures how far a pass traveled before being caught. Only 54.8% of Fields throws have been on target, which is the worst number in the NFL.

Sunday, one deep ball incompletion was his fault. Another plainly was not.

On the Bears’ first offensive play, Fields took a shotgun snap, faked a handoff right to running back David Montgomery and looked deep right for Equanimeous St. Brown. The receiver had cornerback Anthony Brown beat by four yards, Eberflus estimated, but Fields left the throw short. It fell incomplete.

“We gotta let that air out,” Eberflus said. “[Fields] knows that. … Just a little under-thrown on that one.”

St. Brown slowed down to try for the catch, but probably could have flailed more and hoped for a defensive pass interference penalty.

“Certainly that’s some gamesmanship,” Eberflus said. “We let the guys use their instincts on that.”

St. Brown had a touchdown in his hands later in the game. When the Cowboys jumped offside with 20 seconds left in the first half, Fields knew he had a free play and launched a ball to the front right pylon. St. Brown leaped for the ball with both hands but Brown helped poke it away.

“That was a wonderful throw,” Eberflus said. “I’ve been saying it all along, he’s a wonderful deep ball thrower. He can put it on a dime, drop it in the bucket, whatever metaphor you want to use. He certainly had a couple of good ones there.”

The other came when, with 2:45 to play in the first half, receiver Velus Jones split wide and beat Brown down the right sideline. Fields launched the ball 54 yards in the air, and it landed in both of the rookie’s hands at the 4. Jones, who has muffed two punts this season, dropped it as he fell to the ground.

“He worked himself open all the way down the field, and that ball was on the money,” Eberflus said.

One of the benefits of the Bears’ successful run game is the mismatches they can get deep down the field. It hasn’t produced success. Of the nine passing quadrants beyond the line of scrimmage — to the left, right and middle from 0-10 yards, 11-20 and 20-plus — Fields has a passer rating above league average on only two.

Fixing that is the next step.

“It would be a big help rounding out the offense,” running back Khalil Herbert said.