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Bears rookie quarterback Justin Fields had his best performance of the season in last week’s loss to the 49ers, where he looked poised, decisive and confident whether it was throwing or running.
Everyone knew Fields was a dual-threat quarterback coming out of Ohio State, but Bears fans got a glimpse of it for the first time last Sunday.
“I think the thing you saw [Sunday] was the decisiveness in his running,” said pass game coordinator/quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. “When he took off, he decided to go. That was a huge part of that game.”
One example of that was Fields’ 22-yard run on fourth-and-1 that resulted in a touchdown. DeFilippo called it a “generational-type run.”
“It doesn’t get any better than that,” he added.
Last Sunday’s game was the most the Bears have moved Fields outside the pocket all season, and it certainly paid off. Fields had 10 carries for 103 yards, becoming the first Bears quarterback to rush for more than 100 yards since Bobby Douglass in 1973.
“That’s probably a big part of us as a staff, too, being able to adapt and figure out, ‘OK, there are so many little moving parts to learning who he is as a quarterback and how he fits within this offense,'” Nagy said.
“I think [Sunday], credit our coaching staff for being able to put together opportunities for him to be able to do that, and then the players to execute it. I mean, you saw the runs. When he gets around the edge, most quarterbacks are going to get tackled. He had a few plays [Sunday] where it was him one-on-one with a D-end or an outside linebacker and they didn’t have a shot and he turned it into a 15-yard scramble.
“We need to be able to allow him to get to those parts of his game. [Sunday], I thought you saw that. Whether it’s a designed run or whether it’s, ‘Hey, on time and in rhythm, the play’s not there, take off,’ you saw some of those [Sunday], too. The more he can do that and the more he can balance and not put too much on his plate with the QB zone reads and stuff and we allow him to play fast, that’s a win for our offense, and that’s how he’s going to grow.”