Justin Fields left the Chicago Bears two months ago with little controversy. GM Ryan Poles traded him to the Pittsburgh Steelers, thanking the young quarterback for all his hard work over the past three years. It was a sad but uneventful sendoff. Apparently, not everybody was satisfied with how things played out. Not long after Fields left, rumors began surfacing that Fields’ image of a tough competitor and locker room leader was carefully crafted for the media without much actual truth behind it.
Tyler Dunne of Go Long has several connections inside the NFL. He reached out to several of them for a piece he did on the Bears’ ugly quarterback history. The details he uncovered about Fields were shocking. There was his contentious relationship with Andy Dalton and Nick Foles, for one. Fields apparently didn’t like the idea of being mentored by them and felt he didn’t need their help. It didn’t end there. One person inside the locker room told Dunne that the quarterback was never the elite leader he was often portrayed as.
One source plugged into the Bears locker room says the widely held narrative that Fields was a strong leader is inflated, citing the quarterback as “a surface level dude” who didn’t develop authentic relationships with teammates. He called reports that teammates love Fields “bullshit,” adding that the quarterback carried himself with an undeserved aura and lacks emotional intelligence for someone who’s been a quarterback so long.
Another source said Fields lacked a “presence” in the building.
Yes, guys like D.J. Moore and Jaylon Johnson spoke out on his behalf. That is what good teammates do. Fields had some in the locker room who loved him. That isn’t unusual. Jay Cutler had his fans, too. Yet it doesn’t feel like the quarterback was as universally beloved as many felt. So many people feared a locker room mutiny if the Bears decided to part ways with Fields. That never happened. In fact, there was hardly any outrage at all. A few heartfelt tweets, and that was it. Once Caleb Williams arrived, everybody seemed to move on real fast.
Plenty of people will call this a character assassination. Nameless sources are taking shots at Justin Fields when he isn’t around to defend himself. Maybe that is true. Or perhaps they couldn’t say anything when he was still on the team because it would’ve created a needless distraction. It is already hard enough winning without controversies. Don’t forget what happened in 2014 once it came out that offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer trashed Cutler to the press. The team imploded.
This was the only way to set the record straight, at least in their eyes.
