Chicago Bears

Bagent made a handful of throws that were legit impressive. That off balance touch throw to Moore was 100/100. A real, honest to goodness impressive throw from a Bears QB. He has solid touch and it's encouraging to see him play with swagger and confidence as that's one of the only ways a non-elite athletic talent can stick. Judging him fairly (UDFA rookie, 2nd start) he did more than fine. A lot of his mistakes are the same rookie mistakes virtually every young QB makes, whether drafted 1-1 or not drafted at all.

I'm not taking "he's a career backup" claims after two starts seriously when people call out him throwing into coverage or missing reads, when every single rookie does the same thing. Peyton fucking Manning had like 30 INTs his rookie year because it took him a long ass time to realize the throws he made his entire life were no longer viable in the NFL. Bagent sees a window that isn't there and throws the ball at it because he's a rookie that hasn't learned what a safe or smart NFL pass is yet. Shit, guys like Hurts and TLaw STILL do it too often. It's hard af to adjust to the dramatic increase in defensive talent and scheming at the NFL level.

Criticism of his arm is also overblown and a nonsensical reason to label him a career backup after two starts. How did we get to a point where not being able to sling it like Herbert or Allen or Randall Cunningham meant you can't start? Bagent very clearly has a mediocre, average NFL arm. People harping on his two underthrows on deep balls fail to mention that he overthrew VJJ on a deep route later in the game, likely as compensation for being short on the first two deep throws. How can a guy with an unusable noodle overthrow one of the fastest guys in the league? Hmmm. Maybe he doesn't have a noodle but rather hasn't developed good touch on deep throws because the guys he's throwing to run faster than anyone he's ever thrown to and on top of that he has to sling the ball out in half the time he's used to. You know, rookie shit you see every year from every Qb. Except Will Levis I guess.

If you have above average qualities elsewhere you can make up for a non-elite arm. Guys like Brees and Montana had Bagent arms and did kinda fine, no? They had top tier talent around them and were top tier decision makers and that was that. Bagent isn't going to become Montana or Brees, obviously, but it's not like he can't become a Brad Johnson or something. A guy with a mid arm that is good enough to be an average to above average NFL starter because he limits his mistakes and eventually hones in on the accuracy portion of the game.

We don't know his ceiling. It very well may be career backup. But we don't know. We have two games to look at. Better than the first two games of a lot of guys who have had good careers. I've recently watched back a lot of 2006 recently and can say with confidence Bagent is at least a tier above Sexy Rexy. That motherfucker played so dumb and threw in what looked like slow motion when he wasn't just randomly heaving a ball downfield that would land way out of bounds or 10+ yards away from any receiver. So uhhhh yeah, there's that. Bagent > Grossman. Print it.

With Justin coming back, we're not gonna see any more real on field growth from Bagent this year, and we already know where Justin is headed after this season (out of Chicago). So really the QB talk is just something we're all participating in because there's nothing else to talk about on-field that's particularly exciting. For anyone who hasn't yet accepted it: The Bears are 100% drafting a QB. They just are. Justin is only sticking around going into year 5 if the Bears are ready to make a nine figure commitment to him to be the QB of the future. There's not a competent GM in the entire league that would sign off on that. That's a Daniel Jones contract on steroids. So he's gone. To play himself into a deal like that would take the greatest QB run any player has ever had over the second half of the year. So good luck hoping on that if JF is your guy.

Look, go ahead and have fun picking a side and bickering to pass the time, but don't take this shit too seriously. Next year it'll be Maye or Williams behind center and we can have some QB conversation around here actually worth a damn because the guy we're talking about will actually be around a while. For now, I'm just cheering on growth from young players we desperately need to improve (particularly in the trenches and secondary) and hoping with either our pick or Carolina's we're in good position to add whichever QB we want. The QB battle stuff is fun to get crazy over but it's ultimately not real. It's like going into the 2020 primaries and getting heated over Maryanne Williamson or Amy Klobuchar. Fields or T-Bag, you're putting your money on a horse that's simply not going to win.