However, you feel about the Chicago Bears, Justin Fields hasn’t unintentionally run out of the back of end zones during the 2023 NFL season (though, Gardner Minshew did). Maybe Stephen A. Smith was trying to make Dan Orlovsky, whom he has often imitated and even accused of lying about watching every play in the NFL, feel better with this take.
Prior to Chicago’s 40-20 beatdown of the Washington Commanders on Thursday Night Football, Smith claimed that this season’s version of the Bears was worse than the 0-16 Lions (whom Orlovsky played for). And while coach Matt Eberflus likely won’t be lifting a Lombardi Trophy at the end of the season, Smith’s bold take on the state of the Bears has since aged like milk.
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“This team is an atrocity. An atrocity. [General manager] Ryan Poles, I’m not blaming him one bit. He came in after they hired the coach…He didn’t hire the coach. He didn’t pick Justin Fields. OK? That’s my point. When you look at this team right now, from an organizational perspective, they don’t seem to know what the hell they’re doing.
“Eberflus, you have no business being a head coach in the National Football League. We’re approaching the calendar year since they’ve won a football game. The calendar year. Do you understand that even when the Detroit Lions went 0-16, they didn’t go a calendar year without winning…Understand what that means. As your team, you can struggle in the throws of a season. Oh no, they lost last year, took a break for months, came back, went through training camp and the preseason, and contained the preseason. It don’t get no worse than that. That’s organizational.
“You got a quarterback in Justin Fields that we’re looking at and we’re saying, ‘Excuse me, from a talent perspective, this brother can ball. Move a third or fourth-round pick and get him in the right place.’ You’re not talking about people excoriating him. He’s been sacked 17 times—third most in the league. Obviously, Sam Howell has been sacked more than anybody in the league…But the reality is, when you look at Justin Fields, you have people in the National Football League, clamoring, doing figurative SOS signs to come save this man, because of the situation he is in. It’s organizational, and it starts when you look at this head coach. I don’t blame him for saying what he’s said, but he’s got no business being the head coach of the team. The offensive coordinator has no business being the offensive coordinator of the team…
“You got a quarterback in Justin Fields that we’re looking at and we’re saying, ‘Excuse me, from a talent “But when you look at it, again, you took the break and you came back. That’s like passing gas and walking down the street a block or a mile away and then somebody still smelling. Well, guess what, you did more than pass gas at that point. You did more than pass gas, because they stink that’s why. We don’t even call them the Bad News Bears ’cause we want to do the Bad News Bears a favor. At least it was a great movie. You can’t even say that about the Bears, OK?”
Smith knows a thing or two about having bubble guts, so his passing gas analogy, as bad it was, made some sense. But mind you he had no idea who the Bears offensive coordinator, Luke Getsy was, just last week. So this argument about the Bears, who are a lot more talented than the 2008 Lions, being a worse team is a bit all over the place.
Never before have we seen an NFL team that has seemed so distraught after losing a Week 1 game, but the Bears looked like a broken team. Between the lackluster play of Fields, who walked back critical comments he made about the team’s coaching staff to the defensive coordinator resigning (Pat McAfee reported his home was raided by the FBI) to asking Chase Claypool to stay away from the team, the Bears were and you could argue—still are—a hot mess.
But any argument that indicates that the Bears are worse than a team that didn’t win a single game, was proven to be null and void by Thursday’s win, in which the embattled Fields completed 15-of-29 passes (51.7 percent) for 282 yards and four passing touchdowns. Three of those passing touchdowns went to D.J. Moore, who hauled in eight receptions for 230 yards. Moore could’ve had a fourth touchdown, but a controversial call, which Kirk Herbstreit later responded to the criticism of, prevented that from happening.
Now with egg on his face, the Bears have proven Smith to be wrong. His sentiment about them being a bad football team wasn’t out of place, especially because they were coming off a loss to a Denver Broncos team that gave up 70 points a week prior. But any proclamation that bold just four games into the season—prior to Week 5—is just looking to be proven wrong.
It’s safe to say that the Bears aren’t the worst team in NFL history, for whatever that’s worth.