A Justin Fields highlight video has the true believers seeing things

Bears quarterback Justin Fields runs with the ball during a game against the Falcons on Dec. 31 at Soldier Field.

Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images

The Bears posted a 48-second Justin Fields highlight video Saturday on X. Here he’s throwing a touchdown pass to his favorite target, DJ Moore. There he’s escaping the clutches of a defender on the way to another death-defying run.

The video has set off a social-media frenzy because many see it as a sign, possibly from above, that the Bears are going to keep Fields as their quarterback and either use the No. 1 overall draft pick on a receiver or trade it to get more picks and players.

Embracing this idea involves a lot more than suspending belief. It involves huge amounts of hope and gullibility, a large dose of conspiratorial thinking and possibly some moonshine. If it is a suspension of belief, it should come with a $50,000 fine.

According to the most overheated interpretations, no one in the Bears’ social-media department would have the authority to create and post such a video on their own. If I have this right, it somehow follows that general manager Ryan Poles shared with somebody in the lower echelons of the organization that he had made up his mind on one of the biggest decisions in franchise history. Hey, kid, what do you think of posting a video?

This is the same Poles who has said he’ll use every bit of the time given him to do his due diligence on USC quarterback Caleb Williams before the April 25 draft. It’s the same Poles who plays his cards so close to the vest that his arms have started retracting into his body.

We’re asked to believe that the general manager has decided, in record time, to give up the tactical advantage that comes with having the No. 1 pick. That he sees no need to play coy, even if it might lessen the value of whatever trade he might make. That he’s just a guy who wants to see people get ahead, even in the social-media department at Halas Hall.

Over the past week, the Bears also posted highlight videos of Moore and the team’s linebackers. You’d think that might take some of the steam out of the argument that the Fields video has deeper meaning. Um, no. As of Sunday morning, the homage to the quarterback had garnered more than six million views. That’s a lot of tea-leave reading.

To those of you who are sure the video is the Bears’ way of announcing their intention to keep Fields – as incredibly improbable as that is – let’s look at it from another angle. What if the team hadn’t produced a video tribute to Fields but had to other players? Can you imagine the firestorm? Can you hear the howls of the fans certain they were about to lose a loved one? 

The Bears had to make a Fields video. If they hadn’t, millions of people with nothing else to do would be reading the absence of one as proof of Fields’ eventual departure. 

It’s going to be a long three months.

If I were to point out that it’s unhealthy for people to become so attached to someone they don’t even know, I’d probably get six million ugly missives. If I were to point out that it’s dumb to become so attached to a kinda, sorta OK quarterback, I’d probably get six million hits to my body, starting with noogies and proceeding to kneecappings.

So I won’t point it out. 

It’s worth noting that many responses to the video on X are from people telling the here’s-proof-that-Fields-is-staying crowd that they’re idiots. It’s evidence that there are some sane Bears fans among us. From a sociological standpoint, though, it is concerning that so many folks would allow themselves to be drawn into an alternate reality. Conspiracy theories happen not because people are tricked into believing something but because people believe what they want to believe.

Believing there was a chance the Bears were going to hire Jim Harbaugh to replace Matt Eberflus was silliness, too. Not because Harbaugh wouldn’t do a good job or because he wouldn’t be any better than Eberflus. It’s because any student of Bears ownership knows that Harbaugh isn’t the McCaskeys’ kind of guy.

Harbaugh looks like somebody who just answered a casting call for an unhinged grocery store butcher.

Eberflus looks like a museum docent.

You tell me who fits the McCaskey profile.

Let’s cut the pro-Fields group some slack. The Bears’ history over the past 35-plus years tells us that the organization doesn’t like change. As much as anything, that’s why Eberflus is still here. But applied to the quarterback situation, that way of thinking would lead one to believe that the Bears would want to keep Fields.

There’s a new sheriff in town, however, and there’s a decent chance he’s going to trade Fields and use the top pick on Williams.

No matter what a certain highlight video might suggest.

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