Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk joined the Dan Bernstein Show to discuss whether the new Bears regime believes in second-year quarterback Justin Fields.
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But why tank?
(670 The Score) Though Bears second-year quarterback Justin Fields wasn't drafted by the current front office, there's been little to no public indication that new general manager Ryan Poles and the rest of his regime are less optimistic about Fields' future than former lead executive Ryan Pace was.
At the NFL Combine in late February and early March, Poles went on record to discuss the "high ceiling" that Fields had and how one of the Bears' primary goals was to put him in the best position to succeed. Still, because Fields wasn't drafted by Poles, there has been the occasional rumor -- if you could even call it a rumor -- that this front office may not be quite as bullish on Fields as the last. So is there any truth to that? Speaking on the Dan Bernstein Show on 670 The Score on Wednesday, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk speculated that some of Poles' moves may point to "a hidden message."
"There's a fine line between deliberately and strategically taking a step back and tanking," Florio said. "There's a fine line between those two things. But it feels like the Bears are deliberately taking a step back. And the problem is, usually teams do that when they don't have a quarterback they believe in, because part of the setup is, 'We will be so bad, we end up with a quarterback who becomes our franchise foundation.' Maybe that's the hidden message here, that the new regime doesn't believe in Justin Fields. Because if they did, would they be tearing everything else down? Or would they be trying to build everything else up? Because what happens is if the team stinks, Justin Fields is going to have a rough year, and fans will be like, 'Well, we wasted a couple first-round picks on him, on to the next one.' So, maybe if there's truth to the idea -- and it sure looks like it -- that they're deliberately tearing everything down, it could be that this is just step one toward moving on from Justin Fields at the appropriate time, which could be as soon as next year, if they would trade him to someone else and then begin their search for whoever the next franchise quarterback is going to be