If the Eagles are serious about a trade for Justin Fields, it’s time for the QB factory to close up shop

The argument against Justin Fields is simple.

He isn’t good. In fact, he isn’t anywhere close to being good. All of the experts who insist otherwise do not know what they are talking about. They either do not know what they are looking at or fall victim to some sort of motivated reasoning. The same people who are telling you that Fields would be an intriguing addition for the Eagles are the ones who kept insisting that the Bears had a serious decision to make between Fields and Southern California’s Caleb Williams or North Carolina’s Drake Maye. It was an unserious opinion about an unserious quarterback.

Everything beyond that is moot. Or, it should be. The Eagles have as much reason to believe that Tanner McKee can pull a Nick Foles in the unfortunate event of an injury to Jalen Hurts. I’m not saying that McKee is a better quarterback than Fields. He probably isn’t. But he at least has the benefit of the unknown.

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We know what Fields is. So do the Bears. He is the same thing Marcus Mariota was after three seasons with the Titans. Not good enough, and blatantly so. Except, Mariota actually quarterbacked a team that won more games than it lost in his second and third seasons. Fields has never done that. Never even came close. The Bears have won 10 games in which Fields started in the three years since drafting him No. 11 overall. Name the last Super Bowl quarterback who went 10-28 in his first 38 starts while averaging 166.9 passing yards per game and 5.28 net yards per attempt.

I know all of that probably sounds a bit hypocritical to anyone who has read what I’ve previously had to say about QB wins as a metric. But I’m talking a different order of magnitude here. It doesn’t matter how bad your organization is, if you are a legitimate NFL quarterback, you will quarterback a functional offense within your first three years as a starter. The Bears are looking to trade Fields because they are as far away from that goal as they were when they started.

None of this would be worth a federal case — or an 800-word column — in ordinary circumstances. The Eagles have had plenty of backup quarterbacks who had zero shot at serving as a competent long-term sub. There’s a reason I mentioned Mariota. Guys like Foles and Gardner Minshew are anomalies, mostly because they don’t stay backups for long. Mariota, Chase Daniel, Nate Sudfeld — they are your normies. The NFL’s backup quarterback situation is the whole reason the starting quarterback situation is so important.

Which brings us to the reason why the Eagles’ reported interest in Fields is worth a lengthy diatribe. The reason is that it is dangerous. It’s one thing to have a nonfactor as your QB2. It’s quite another to have a nonfactor who can harm your QB1.

I made this argument when the Eagles drafted Hurts. And, yeah, I was wrong. Hurts turned out to be good enough to warrant the risk the Eagles took. But let’s not forget the nature of that risk. They risked alienating and undermining an insecure quarterback whose leadership was already being questioned and who was a couple of lousy performances away from having fans and teammates completely turn against him. That’s exactly how it played out. The Eagles needed Hurts to be as good as he was. Imagine if, instead, he’d spent the last three years looking like Fields.

The big problem with Fields is the one I referenced at the beginning of this rant. He isn’t good, but there are a lot of people who think he is good. That would seem to include a lot of his Bears teammates.

Clearly, Fields is a likable guy who inspires some loyalty. That can be a good quality for a backup quarterback, as long as your starting quarterback has an unquestioned amount of political capital and the full faith and credit of his organization and fan base. Even then, we saw how Aaron Rodgers reacted to the Packers drafting Jordan Love.

Hurts is so much better than Fields that it shouldn’t matter. The question is, why take that risk? Does the upside of Fields really warrant the risk? What’s the best-case scenario? Hurts returns to his MVP form but misses a few games. Fields fills in capably enough to win a game or two and put the Eagles in a position to trade him for, what, a second- or third-round pick? That’d be great. In fact, if the Eagles are really thinking about acquiring Fields, it is surely the scenario they have in mind. Trade a sixth-round pick for him, then trade him for a third. Bingo bango. Howie Roseman is a genius.

But what are the odds of that scenario unfolding? And how does the potential reward compare to the worst-case scenario?

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Which is this: Fields arrives, thrives in the critical anonymity afforded a backup quarterback, lurks on the sideline amid the ever-growing make-believe about who he could be, all while Hurts sets about proving that he is still the guy who led the Eagles to a Super Bowl in 2022 and a 10-1 start in 2023. The whole time, Hurts is carrying the psychological baggage he accrued in college, when he saw firsthand how quickly the Alabama Crimson Tide of public and internal opinion can turn against a quarterback. He is remembering how quickly that tide turned against Carson Wentz in his favor. However much he tries to ignore it and focus on the economics of his situation, it is there, lurking.

Even if it is a sliver of doubt, why introduce it into the equation? The Eagles are committed to Hurts: financially, competitively. Their singular goal right now is to create an environment where he can thrive. The last thing they should want to do is back him up with a player who poses even the slightest shred of a threat.

Especially one who actually isn’t.