Why would you not snap it before the two minute warning??

It’s the coaches fault Justin fumbles or throws a pick every time we have a chance to win.

Put in Bagent

I posted the video of this play last night and got roasted for saying the same thing.

Can’t say Fields maybe should have thrown it to Dj Moore, that’s hating on Fields and makes you stupid.

Not if he won

Fields doesn’t audible when they are stacking the box. The second to last drive it was painful to watch them run it up the middle two plays in a row.

Never see Fields making changes pre-snap.

Didn’t see a single screen pass in the first half 👌

Giving up the check down in the middle of the field kills us every game

The Super Bowl shuffle

Take the lead with a safety

Nfl is rigged

Dude flopped on that penalty

Fuck these refs

It could have easily been 27-20 when we kicked the onside kick had we not gone for it on their 30 early in the second half and kicked 2 field goals when we had the chance.

It could have easily been 27-20 when we kicked the onside kick had we not gone for it on their 30 early in the second half and kicked 2 field goals when we had the chance.

If you compared Fields and Bagent’s first two starts they are pretty comparable.

They both went 1-1 and Bagent actually has better stats I’d say

Fields had 17 completions on 37 attempts for 277 yards. 0 Td 1 Int 1 Fumble Ran 6 times and gained 21 yards on the ground. He got sacked 10 times for loss of 91 yards.

Bagent had 46 completions on 66 attempts for 395 yards. 1 Td 2 Int 0 Fumbles Ran 5 times for 28 yards and a touchdown. He got sacked 2 times for a loss of 12 yards.

The Unlikely Story Behind the NFL’s Most Unlikely Quarterback

Tyson Bagent was a Division II quarterback before he went undrafted. Then the rookie who the establishment overlooked impressed by winning his first game as a fill-in starter.

But there were some people who weren’t at all shocked by the most improbable story in the NFL this season. They’re the same people who had actually seen Bagent play football before.

“I expected him to do very well,” says Dave Walker, Bagent’s high school coach. “I’m not surprised by the success he’s having.”

What’s astounding about Bagent is how long the brightest minds in football missed on someone capable of playing the most important position in the sport at the game’s highest level. Even when quarterbacks slip through the cracks, it usually takes just a season or two to identify them. Baker Mayfield began his college career as a walk-on, but by the end of it he was a Heisman Trophy winner at Oklahoma and the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.

Bagent was ignored by mainstream college programs coming out of high school. NFL teams didn’t pay much notice when he broke NCAA records and became the rare Division II prospect invited to the Senior Bowl. Even when he scored an invite to the annual scouting combine, every single franchise passed on him in this year’s draft. That turned out to be an opportunity for the Bears, who signed him as an undrafted free agent and are already reaping a windfall.

But the first time Bagent went completely overlooked, Ernie McCook was the one celebrating. McCook was the coach of Shepherd University, a D-II school in West Virginia, who recruited him out of high school. He knew that he had a genuine shot at landing Bagent. He also knew that he shouldn’t have. “We knew he was better than a Division II football player,” McCook says.

Top-shelf Division I teams took too long to realize that, and McCook had some advantages. Shepherd is a quick drive from where Bagent attended high school in Martinsburg, W.V. Both of Bagent’s parents attended Shepherd. His father actually played baseball for the Rams, though these days he’s better known as one of the greatest competitive arm wrestlers of all time. It runs in the family: Bagent’s grandfather was also an elite armwrestler.

Not everyone appreciated the genes running through Bagent’s arm. Walker, the coach at Martinsburg High School, was taken aback when colleges would call him about Bagent only to pass in the end. Bagent, Walker thought, could make all the throws. More than that, he was a film rat with an unbelievable work ethic.

Walker has a couple ideas on why they whiffed. Bagent was still just 17 years old when he graduated high school. He thrived more as a traditional pocket passer at a time when some coaches wanted a quarterback with more athleticism. It didn’t exactly make sense to Walker given who he would compare Bagent to.

“I always called him our little Tom Brady,” Walker says. “Tyson Bagent, TB, same initials.”

Bagent’s top offers ended up coming from FCS schools like Albany in the lower level of Division I. He opted to stay close to home, and that came with the benefit of gaining instant experience on the field. Bagent was installed as Shepherd’s starter as a freshman in 2018, and in his first game he threw for over 500 yards and three touchdowns. That was just the beginning of his assault on the college football record books.

Like so many college athletes, though, his career was interrupted by Covid. Unlike so many others, it may have boosted Bagent’s trajectory. Because he was younger than many of his peers, the kiboshed season allowed him to develop physically. He spent the year getting chased off any field he could find to train on.

When he returned, he was better than ever. He had career highs with 53 touchdowns and 5,000 passing yards in 2021, and those numbers were so outrageous that Bagent entered the transfer portal and attracted the attention of schools like West Virginia that once ignored him. “I don’t like to think about that time in my life,” McCook says. But this time it was Bagent’s chance to snub them: he chose staying at Shepherd over his Division I suitors.

After coming back for one last season, Bagent led Shepherd to the D-II playoff semifinals for the second consecutive year and threw a career-low eight interceptions with 41 touchdowns. Five of those scores came against the East Stroudsburg Warriors, who had the misfortune of giving up 16 touchdowns in Bagent’s three games against them. Warriors coach Jimmy Terwilliger remembers one of those in particular. That’s because Bagent broke the record Terwilliger set for most career Division II touchdown passes with Terwilliger coaching on the opposing sideline.

During that surreal moment, the game stopped and the pair embraced on the field. Terwilliger was proud to be connected to a quarterback he knew might get a crack at the NFL. Which is also why he’s not exactly upset that he no longer has to scheme against Bagent.

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Terwilliger says. “Coaching against him was just a menace.”

By the time the 2022 season was over, Bagent hadn’t just set the D-II high-water mark with 159 career touchdown passes. He owned the mark at every level of NCAA football.

Bagent’s play netted him an invite to the Senior Bowl, where one team’s brass got an especially good look at him. Luke Getsy, the Bears’ offensive coordinator, was the coach of the American team, which counted six players from the Alabama Crimson Tide, four Georgia Bulldogs and one Shepherd Ram on its roster.

During Senior Bowl week, Getsy said he at first thought Bagent was a “nervous dude.” Then he realized Bagent was just working maniacally hard.

“By the time we got to Wednesday, Thursday, I saw a guy ready to rock and roll,” Getsy said last week.

Shortly after the draft, the Bears scooped up Bagent as one of their undrafted free agents. Those players are usually happy to make the practice squad because it means they weren’t cut from the team entirely. Bagent, though, defied expectations once again: he beat out a veteran for the role of No. 2 quarterback.

The player ahead of him on the depth chart couldn’t have been more different. Justin Fields was a first-round pick after being one of the top recruits in the entire country out of high school. He enrolled at Georgia before transferring to Ohio State—the exact type of schools that never had Bagent on their radar.

When Fields injured his thumb mid-game a couple of weeks ago, Bagent was called into replace him, and he got the starting nod with Fields out last week. In the start, Bagent completed 72.4% of his passes while Chicago cruised to a 30-12 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders. The solid, if not spectacular, performance included a touchdown throw and no turnovers.

It’s been an extraordinary turn of events for Bagent, who was used to playing on Saturdays in front of a few thousand fans. And with Fields out this weekend, Bagent will get a second consecutive start.

This time, it will be nationally televised with millions of viewers on Sunday Night Football.

Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com

https://youtu.be/k4xsqvEDLUU?si=Khi9zUIFmFc7-wHe

Yes he is working on increasing his throwing power and talks about it in this video.