Good morning, everybody. Today is Thursday, June 29th. Thank you for making me a part of your morning before we get into the Bears episode today. I want to remind everybody that we'll take a couple days off after the episode tomorrow.

So if you come back Monday or Tuesday, looking for the podcast during the long weekend, if it's not there, you know why we'll be back next Wednesday after the episode tomorrow.

Let's talk about the Chicago Bears.

Chicago right now is a team that nobody can really say anything negative about. It's actually incredible how a team that finished as poorly as they did last year getting the number one pick has every single comment about them being for the most part optimist took her positive.

Let's focus on the offense for the sake of this episode. We'll leave Everflus and the defense and how soft that is for the full preview coming later in July.

But let's talk about the offense, specifically Justin Fields. If you do a search on him, Twitter, Google anywhere you go, you can find anything you want to hear about Justin Fields that will paint this offense in a in a good way.

You see that he can take the next step as a passer. You can see comments where offensive coordinated look gets he is saying that this passing game is ready to take off.

You can see articles that say Fields is night and day from where he was a year ago. Everything about this working with Michael Vick becoming a better passer.

It's all positive for the Chicago Bears. Passing issues have been really related to his decision making and willingness to put the ball down field of all the numbers to me that stood up from a year ago. It was the fact that Justin Fields ranked dead last in the NFL for aggression percentage.

And that's a next gen stat that looks at throws down field where the defender is within one yard of the intended receiver. No quarterback in the entire NFL had a lower percentage of those throws than Justin Fields.

And of all the sort of articles that you can read right now about Justin Fields. A lot of them focus on the fact that last year he did not have anybody who could separate at the end of their route. His deep threat was Darnell Mooney.

Valis Jones never even became a starter despite all of the speed that he had chase Clay pool has been erratic to say the least after they acquired him and he played in the Bears rotation.

Fields has just not had that deep downfield guy. People believed that more is going to be able to solve that DJ more last year second in receptions downfield of 20 or more yards.

We certainly a downfield guy that can open up the offense and everybody's just assuming that this is going to work.

And so there's obviously going to be situations where fields and more have success and there's big passes completed down field.

But I can't help but think back to that aggression percentage and where it's not something that fields has shown never mind physically being able to do it and have the decision making skills to make those throws.

He just has it tried throwing those balls down field. I'm not going to debate his arm strength. It's certainly there. But it's something that you see with quarterbacks that just it's a really hard thing to develop and a really hard thing to get difficult with.

And so where I kind of disagree with the way that the Bears offense is being painted at the moment is because they added this deep threat.

And DJ more because they beefed up the offensive line. All of the sudden fields is going to make those throws.

He hasn't been trying to make those throws. It hasn't been a case of where they just weren't working. It's just he doesn't do that as a passer.

And so if they really encourage him to do so and it changes his style, you get to the next question where you look at how long he holds on to the football.

No quarterback in 2022 held the ball longer. Personapped in Justin Fields at nearly three and a half seconds.

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