Here's a hot Caleb/Fields take that I know Tempo will like. And let me preface this by repeating something I've said all year: there are NO "can't miss" prospects. Caleb isn't one, MHJ isn't one, Andrew Luck wasn't one. The day of the draft, no one REALLY knows. Caleb could ABSOLUTELY be mediocre or worse, no question about it. I think he has a really high ceiling, but I've obviously never seen him play any NFL football and until he does, no one really knows what the Bears have in him.
But I think if the Bears (specifically them) didn't have the first pick this year - a major-market team with a massive, passionate fanbase that's NEVER had a great QB, who recently drafted a QB who has shown flashes and highlight plays but never put it together to be an actually good quarterback with any consistency - that Caleb's "red flags" would be almost entirely a non-issue and there'd be a near-consensus that he was one of the better prospects of the last 25 years. That doesn't mean they'd be right, but I think the Fields situation definitely contributed to suddenly there being some big unmissable 'red flags' (most of which are actually non-issues) in a prospect who would've gone #1 last year if he'd been eligible and had another monster statistical season with a worse team.
The flip side of that is that if the Bears didn't have a top-5 pick this year and ONLY picked at 9, there'd definitely be a whole lot less controversy about maybe picking up Fields' Y5 option and giving him another chance with a better core before you try to draft over him next year (or the year after). Fields was mostly mediocre, not bad - and obviously, electric with his legs. Personally I would much prefer an electric arm (and I think it's telling that even like Lamar hasn't broken through in the playoffs - the best teams seem to consistently be the ones with great QBs who can sling it) - but Fields' legs are definitely a weapon and if they went into next season with DJ, Allen, Odunze, and Fields there'd be at least moderate excitement in Chicago. I am not convinced Fields would be great even with that kind of core, and I think their ceiling and situation are much much better in reality than they'd be in that "what-if".
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