Justin Fields and Bears Predicted for Poor Offensive Season by Vegas

It’s no secret that the 2021 NFL season was a tough one for the Chicago Bears, as they cycled through multiple quarterbacks and essentially wasted Justin Fields rookie season with Matt Nagy still coaching the team. 

Now, in 2022, Nagy is gone and Fields is the unquestioned starter, but the team let top receiver Allen Robinson II walk in free agency. 

Youngster Darnell Mooney will step into the No. 1 role for the Bears, but the team still has some serious questions after him and Cole Kmet in its pass-catching corps. David Montgomery will lead the backfield, but he dealt with injuries in the 2021 season. 

It’s a less-than-ideal supporting cast for Fields, the team’s first-round pick in 2021, and it could lead to another rough season. The Bears finished 24th in total yards of offense, 27th in points scored and 27th in yards per play last season. 

The team’s passing offense was even worse, ranking 30th in total yards and net yards gained per attempt. If it wasn’t for a running game in the top half of the league, the Bears would have been even worse than 6-11 last season. 

At this point, there is nowhere to go but up for the Bears, and hopefully for Fields, who still looks to be one of the more talented young quarterbacks in the game. Despite that, the oddsmakers at DraftKings aren’t sold on the Bears, giving them the longest odds at +20000 to lead the NFL in scoring in the 2022 season (they are tied with a few teams at that number). 

As good as you may think Fields will be, he did say in mid-June that the team wasn’t quite ready with the new offense to go into a game. Hopefully there has been a ton of progress since then, but the Bears have a ton of new faces on the roster, specifically in the receiver room. 

Byron Pringle is in his first year with the team, and he and Velus Jones Jr. (rookie) are listed as the starters next to Mooney. N'Keal Harry, Equanimeous St. Brown, Dazz Newsome and Tajae Sharpe are also newcomers listed as backups on the team’s depth chart. 

Fields is not only going to need to learn a new offense, but he also has to establish chemistry with a bunch of new receivers as well. That’s asking a lot of a quarterback who didn’t even get a fair shot with the starting gig last season. 

As a Fields believer, I hope he proves this projection wrong and leads the Bears to a solid season, but Vegas has been out on Chicago since the start this offseason. Right now, the Bears and Detroit Lions have the same odds to win the NFC North (+1000 at WynnBET). 

If you think the Bears have a chance of proving the oddsmakers wrong, there are several ways to do so, whether it’s betting on their playoff odds or the OVER on their win total. However, based on some of these projections, it seems like quite a risk to take.

Find Peter Dewey’s full betting record here.