Conor Orr : Justin Fields Should “Transfer”?

Justin Fields Deserves Better

This article by Conor Orr on SI is a bit of a hack job, and a disservice to Justin Fields, as well as the NFL. In a way I hate to say it, because the foundation of his reasoning is something I have felt strongly about for decades. Bad teams can ruin good players, and QBs may be the easiest players to destroy.

For decades, I have seen QBs with plenty of apparent upside come into the NFL only to display nothing but downside. There are always people who say they “saw this coming”, usually with the hope of building their credibility as someone who “knows” football. But I am always in the camp which says one can never be sure how much was bad player and how much was bad situation.

Since before the salary cap, I have felt sorry for the first few QBs drafted each year, because they always went to such undeniably awful teams, and most often left me wondering how they would have done on a better team.

But, the truth is that this is just the way it is in the NFL, and especially with the draft, and it is not limited to just QBs. Every year, without fail most every player drafted, or signed as an undrafted free agent, experiences some level of culture shock. Even free agents changing teams sometimes get it: that first day feeling of “Woah! This is NOT what I expected!”

They may just be surprised by what veterans call :business as usual”. Some may struggle to adapt to the speed of the game, or to no longer being the most athletic person on the field. And, not only rookies, but even veterans changing teams or staying put through a coaching change, can suddenly find themselves asked to do something they don’t feel natural doing. Ask Akiem Hicks about that DC change while he was in NOLA.

So, does it suck to show up to a new team and get blindsided like that? Yes! Of course! Yet it continues to happen, even to veterans. I can’t remember who, but I saw a comment from a WR who had done precious little on a one year deal in New England admitting during free agency that he knew he would never fit in the Patriot’s offense.

So, the question to Conor Orr becomes: How does your “Transfer Portal” help anything? If you think it through, you want to offer every player in the NFL, not only a “No Trade Clause” but a “Must Trade Clause” as well. Beyond being a total pie in the sky pipe dream, how on Earth does it help bad franchises get better? Perhaps Mr Orr should invest heavily in fan/player controlled football, because not even the NFLPA is crazy enough to think NFL Owners would agree to being managed by player preferences.

But, none of that is why I call Mr Orr’s piece a “hack job” or a disservice to Justin Fields. My big problem with his hack job is his assertion that he is sure how Justin Fields must feel like he is pinned under a steam roller and trying to squirm free. Orr writes:

But with Fields, in particular, a player whose feel for the game was demolished behind puzzling, protection-free game plans and a substandard roster in 2021, how can we reasonably expect him to improve in Year 2 when the roster around him has only gotten worse? A scheme change might help, but as good an offensive coordinator as Luke Getsy might be, it’s going to be difficult to overcome some of the harsh, talent-based realities they’ll face this year.

How certain is Orr that Justin Fields had his “feel for the game…demolished”? Could Nagy’s bad coaching do that much damage? Maybe. But, Dowell Loggains cheap trash could have ruined Trubisky.

The thing is, Trubisky went on to have a pretty decent year in Nagy 101; and Nagy’s aimless, identity starved, overly complicated, attempts at a level 201 offense left us with no way to judge the talent level of any player on the team. Any mistake we saw could have come from bad coaching just as easily as from lack of talent.

Conor Orr makes a mistake that many fans and pundits make, he relies on a 1:1 lockstep ration between talent and stats. The line of reasoning with this group seems to be that breakouts and falloffs are purely random noise, and therefore a lack of production must mean a lack of talent.

I call that short sighted and narrow minded. Breakouts and falloffs look random, but that is just because the causes are so complex, and being human, we prefer simple answers. Breakouts finally “got it” and falloffs can pick from a long list of reasons, half of them fictional.

Change, especially changing from something dreadful to anything unknown, always has a chance of providing a surge. When Adam Gase got fired from the Jets in mid season a while back, the Jets won their next game. I remember because I won money on the game, guessing that a rousing chorus of “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead” is always good for the body politic.

People who are equating the lack of flashy big name signings with a guarantee of abject failure are, again, short sighted. Look at what the Bears were for the last few years and what they are trying to become.

This is a team which has wallowed in ambiguity since the double doink heard round the world. We saw “Be You”, “Keep your room tidy”, and “Finding our identity”. We saw over-complication born of desperation, and play calls so “clever” they clearly blew the minds of half the players on the field…mostly on our side…our opponents were rarely so surprised they couldn’t take advantage.

Matt Eberflus, on the other hand comes in with a pre-rolled identity and metrics to measure the application of that identity. Rather than failing and trying to “look at the ‘why'”, ‘Flus is going to give them they ‘why’ and the ‘how’ right up front. By the time the regular season starts, players will know almost exactly what to expect at film reviews.

Even Orr admits that Poles hands were tied by bad contracts and a mountain of dead cap, and that Poles moves have been smart, considering the pickle he inherited. But to say that Justin Fields can’t develop without some mythological minimum talent level around him is an unforgivable slander against Justin Fields.

It is also unjustifiable slander to say that Fields struggles were all about Fields’ “talent” and not about the awful situation he was thrust into by a clearly desperate GM and HC.

I don’t pretend to speak for Justin Fields, and it is possible the dude does want a trade. But if Conor Orr wants to speak for Justin Fields, he should lay off the slander.

Bear Down and Pass the Halas Hall Kool Aid!