Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy walked into the locker room at halftime Sunday with a smile on his face. A smile? With his team shutout and quarterback Justin Fields posting a 2.8 passer rating? With his offense having completed a grand total of zero throws beyond the line of scrimmage? And having averaged, until the scrambled final drive, 1.8 yards per play?
A smile?
“It’s confident …” Fields said Wednesday. “I think just that little body language brought everybody on their feet and kind of encouraged everybody to come out differently in the second half.”
Fields passed it on to his teammates with his play. He posted a 111.8 passer rating in the second half, leading the Bears to three touchdowns — two in the air — in a 19-10 win against the 49ers inside a soggy Soldier Field.
Getsy, though, would probably rather not have to plaster a smile on his face Sunday night in Green Bay. The only thing better than Fields bouncing back at halftime is him not having to.
As the Bears spend the season searching for signs that Fields can be their quarterback for the next decade, they want to see steady play to go with his flashes of athletic brilliance. Fields had good drives, quarters, and halves last season. His ability to turn the page at halftime Sunday was telling.
Still, he needs complete games. Sunday wasn’t one.
“We know it’s always not gonna go our way,” Fields said. “Or we might run into things, run into equations on the field that we can’t control So just control the controllable and executing what we can … Just making sure we’re doing the right thing.”
Fields needs to be more consistent this season. As a rookie, his passer rating was worst in the first (55.9) and fourth (69.5) quarters. He posted ratings of 86.7 in the second and 76.4 in the fourth.
The Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, Sunday’s opponent and the player to whom all quarterbacks must measure themselves, had a 110 passer rating in the third quarter last year and a 110.2 in the fourth. Rodgers was almost the same quarterback in the first (113.2) half as the second (110.1) last season.
Quarterbacks suffered Sunday when rain turned the new Soldier Field sod into a bog. Per NFL Stats and Information, Fields and the 49ers’ Trey Lance completed 17 percent and 21 percent fewer passes than expected, the lowest rates in the NFL.
“In the NFL, you’re going to have halves when it feels like nothing’s working and halves where you’re setting the world on fire,” backup quarterback Trevor Siemian said. “It’s important to fall back on the things you believe in.”
The Bears simplified their playbook at halftime. They began to win the battle of field position after starting inside their own 13 three times in six first-half drives.
“The playbook shrinks a lot with a lot of the things that were going on,” receiver Darnell Mooney said. “We weren’t really worried. After halftime all those tables switched.”
That proved something to head coach Matt Eberflus.
“[Fields] was able to move all those things aside — figuring it out how he was going to grip the ball better, how he was going to operate and then figure out the game as the game went on, and move the ball down the field,” Eberflus said. “That’s what, to me, is outstanding. What an outstanding thing for a young quarterback to have that mental toughness, all of those things going on and to be able to laser-like focus in and get the job done.”
First-half touchdowns, though, would be better.
“I think it was good for us to see, especially being a younger team, that we have that resolve,” Siemian said. “The guys believe it and they know it. But to go out there and prove it one time is important.”
