Chicago Bears 2021 Draft: Ryan Pace talks Justin Fields

The Chicago Bears made two big splashes on the first two nights of the 2021 NFL Draft by trading up for quarterback Justin Fields on Thursday and trading up for Teven Jenkins last night.

General manager Ryan Pace met with the media late on both evenings, so we wanted to make sure you guys didn’t miss any of his thoughts on his two newest players. For his thoughts on Jenkins you can go here, and for Pace’s take on his new quarterback from Ohio State read on.

Pace on developing Justin Fields

The Bears have a plan in place to bring Fields along the right way before he takes the starting job, and with veteran Andy Dalton in place it buys them time to get him ready.

“What I love about our environment is the veteran quarterbacks that we have in that room,” Pace said about Dalton and Nick Foles. “I don’t know if you look around the league how many teams have that kind of experience in the room.”

Those QBs coupled with the coaching staff they have in place makes this a much better situation than the Bears had when it was Mitch Trubisky being drafted into a situation with Mike Glennon as the QB! and John Fox’s staff.

“And then the coaches that we have surrounding that position. I can’t say that enough, Pace said. “Like from Matt to Lazor to Flip. I mean, Flip, he is one of the best coaches in the league at developing quarterbacks. I really believe that. And he is so excited, and Lazor’s excited and Matt’s excited about the opportunity to do that, but at the right speed, because that’s what matters. Developing this guy and the process of how we do that is important. We’ve got a good plan in place to surround him with the right resources, to develop him the right way.”

Dalton was immediately called on Thursday night and told the plan for him to be the starter while they coach up Fields, and that’s a similar situation that Nagy had while he was the O.C. with the Chiefs when they drafted Patrick Mahomes with Alex Smith as their starter.

“Getting (Fields) is one thing, but for us to surround him and develop him is the other thing,” Pace said about their 2021 plan. “You can draft the players, but you have to develop them the right way. And Matt, he has the blueprint. They did an awesome job with Patrick coming into Kansas City, and Matt and I have talked about that a lot; that year and how it was handled. He kind of has a blueprint on how that whole situation went down.”

Mahomes speaks very highly of Nagy from the year they worked together in Kansas City, which is something many fans gloss over because of how great Mahomes has been... and also because of how Trubisky’s game didn’t evolve.

Here’s the full press conference from Pace talking about Fields.

For more on the Justin Fields selection, give Robert Schmitz a listen on his Bear With Me podcast as he’s joined by Jacob Infante, EJ Snyder, and Danny Meehan to break down the pick.

Keep track of all the Bears draft picks and draft trades in our tracker right here.

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