There\u2019s always the chance Fields won\u2019t work out, but we can cross that bridge when it collapses. For now? Go ahead and be excited. After all, you should be.<\/b>
\nA day after the Bears traded up to select Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields with the 11th pick in the NFL draft, investigators were still searching for someone \u2014 anyone \u2014 with a negative word to say about this momentous development. In Chicago and throughout Beardom, meanwhile, the sun shone with unwonted splendor. Birds sang songs of hope. Darkened football hearts soared, strangers embraced (wait, are we allowed to do that yet?) and the Promised Land gleamed on the horizon. Where are the next 10 or 15 Super Bowls being played, anyway? Everyone \u2014 and by that we mean literally everyone \u2014 loves what the Bears did Thursday night, moving up from No.20 by dealing their 2022 first-round pick, a fourth-rounder and a fifth-rounder to the Giants for the chance to draft Fields and rewrite the franchise\u2019s sick, twisted history at the most important position in sports. Beaten-down fans are suddenly coming to terms with a new feeling that resembles happiness. Embattled general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy have new leases on life. Undistinguished veteran quarterback Andy Dalton can forget about being the starter for long. OK, so maybe he\u2019s not as excited as the rest of us. And Fields,22, walks into a situation where he really doesn\u2019t face any pressure at all. All he has to be is the best quarterback the Bears have had since, well, how does ever sound? \u201cThe Bears pulled off one of the biggest steals in the modern draft era,\u201d read one national headline. \u201cJustin Fields is everything that has eluded the Bears for a century,\u201d read another. Pretty much every outlet that graded the first round \u2014 Yahoo, CBS Sports, Pro Football Focus and many others \u2014 gave the Bears its very highest mark. Teams always blow smoke about their own picks, but it\u2019s beyond unusual for the fourth quarterback taken in a draft to generate essentially unanimous raves from the outside looking in. There\u2019s always the chance, of course, that Fields won\u2019t work out and that the same kind of toxic negativity that oozed despite Mitch Trubisky\u2019s earnest efforts will ooze despite Fields\u2019. We can cross that bridge when it collapses. For now? Go ahead and be excited. And consider this column one more vote of confidence in what the Bears have done and in the transformational player Fields can be. Pro-Fields sentiment might run deepest among those who focus more on the college game. Folks in SEC country will tell you Georgia\u2019s coaches made a terrible misjudgment when they named incumbent Jake Fromm \u2014 who\u2019d led the Bulldogs to the national title game in 2017 \u2014 the starter over freshman Fields in 2018. Fromm was a future NFL player Kirby Smart and his staff knew they could trust. But missed in that decision was the growing reality that \u2014 at the apex of the college game \u2014 not having it in you to score damn near every time you touch the ball is a fatal flaw. Clemson\u2019s Trevor Lawrence-led offense was unstoppable by the time the Tigers crushed Alabama in the 2018 title game. Joe Burrow-led LSU took offense to a shocking level in 2019. In 2020, Alabama was perhaps the best offensive team ever, having surrounded Mac Jones with such outrageous talent that really nothing could\u2019ve gone wrong. Fields\u2019 enormous ability enabled Ohio State to become a near approximation of that. And none of those other QBs ever had a better performance than Fields\u2019 in a 49-28 blowout of Lawrence and Clemson in a 2020 playoff semifinal. The Buckeyes piled up an unthinkable 639 yards on the Tigers. Fields \u2014 playing in severe pain \u2014 received multiple shots in an injury tent during the game and still threw six touchdown passes. We\u2019re only guessing that Zach Wilson or Trey Lance \u2014 the Nos.2 and 3 picks, respectively, behind Lawrence \u2014 are capable of rising to that level. We\u2019ve seen Fields do it. \u201cThis guy\u2019s toughness on a scale of 1 to 10 is an 11,\u201d Pace said, \u201cand you just love that about him.\u201d We\u2019re allowed to love it, too, you know, even if it does mean agreeing with Pace again. There\u2019s no way to quantify this, but there has to be more of an exhilarated buzz around the selection of Fields than there has been around any Chicago draftee since the Bulls took Derrick Rose No.1 overall in 2008. Take a moment to let that sink in. There was a can\u2019t-miss excitement about Kris Bryant after the Cubs picked him at No.2 overall in 2013. Blackhawks fans certainly could point to the No.1 overall pick of Patrick Kane in 2007. But they weren\u2019t going to play the most important position in sports for the one team that \u2014 deservedly or not \u2014 owns the town. There was Trubisky in 2017 \u2014 momentous, indeed \u2014 but he came prepackaged with doubts and boos. There are no complaints about Fields, not yet. \u201cI think I fit perfectly,\u201d Fields said. Of course he does. As for the rest of us? Go on, let yourself have some fun with this one.<\/p>\n