November 5, 2024

 Welcome To Philadelphia Eagles” Eagles Head Coach Is Interested With Justin Fields Signing….

What a long, strange trip this has been for Justin Fields and the Chicago Bears, but on Saturday night — after a week of quarterbacking musical chairs played out during the start of free agency and — Fields was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers for a sixth-round pick that could become a fourth-rounder depending on playing time. Fields will back up Russell Wilson for the Steelers, and while that may sound bad for a former starter and first-round draft pick, it might also be the best possible backup job for Fields to have. We explain more, in our winners and losers.

The Steelers have transformed their quarterback room from Mitchell Trubisky, Mason Rudolph and Kenny Pickett to Russell Wilson and Fields for negligible compensation in cash — $4.5 million total for both this year — and draft picks. Getting Fields, who still has tremendous upside, for a low-round draft pick is a steal. They now have a highly motivated Wilson as the starter and a potential future starter who can watch Wilson and be tutored by offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. Finally, after not being fully ready for life after Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers may have their succession plan. And in the ferociously competitive AFC North, they have perhaps the best backup in the league as insurance if Wilson struggles or gets hurt. General manager Omar Khan has been busy — don’t forget their other big free agent signing with linebacker Patrick Queen — and he has engineered a massive upgrade at quarterback while taken on very little risk.

The last week could not have been easy for Fields as everyone from Kirk Cousins to Nathan Peterman landed a new job and he was left waiting. Once it became clear that there would be no starting opportunity for him, he landed in the perfect spot to re-start his career. Wilson is signed for just one year, which — assuming Wilson remains the starter — can be viewed as an apprenticeship for Fields while the Steelers now have the rights to his fifth-year option. Plus, he lands on a team with a top defense, a solid running attack and an offense that uses the run and play action passes, which should simplify the game for Fields. Fields is just 25 and coming off the best season of his career and now has real hope that he will have a future.

Whatever shred of suspense is gone — the Bears will draft a quarterback with the first overall pick and it will be Williams. And he will arrive without the very popular incumbent still in the locker room, an arrival gift the Bears gave Williams with this trade.

With starting and backup jobs vacuumed up in the opening days of free agency, the Bears faced a soft market for Fields and pressure to move him before the draft so that Williams could arrive with a clean slate. That’s how you turn the 11th overall pick into a sixth round draft pick. General manager Ryan Poles had to make the deal, of that there is no debate, but the question that will always hang over the Bears is what they might have gotten if they had agreed to a trade earlier or what they could have gotten if they had traded Fields before last year’s draft and selected C.J. Stroud instead.

If the Bears got only a conditional sixth-round pick for Fields, who played reasonably well last season, what can the Jets hope to get in a trade for Zach Wilson, whom they want to trade with even fewer backup jobs available?

When he wanted out of Pittsburgh after the Steelers signed Wilson, he was traded to the Eagles — who have a superstar starting quarterback with a lucrative contract, giving Pickett almost no chance to be the starter, barring a serious injury to Jalen Hurts. Pickett’s departure created the opening for Fields to become the Steelers’ heir apparent.

 

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