The Bears still don’t have many answers regarding Justin Fields’ ribs injury. Or at least they’re not sharing them.
Matt Nagy addressed the media on Monday, saying the team was “still gathering facts” about the injury, and couldn’t say whether or not Fields would be healthy enough to play against the Lions on Thanksgiving. Nagy also couldn’t say whether Fields had suffered broken ribs, or just bruised ribs, despite reports coming late Sunday night that Fields was dealing with the latter.
Instead, Nagy said the team will prepare for both quarterbacks to start, just like they did earlier in the season when it was Andy Dalton battling through a bone bruise injury.
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“Gameplan wise, you could only do so much in this short amount of time,” Nagy said. “So that’s what we got, to keep that in mind as we go, and our coaches will do a good job of that.”
There’s also the reasonable question of why the Bears would want to rush Fields back on short rest if there’s anything bugging him at all. To that, Nagy pointed towards the valuable and limited gametime experience that Fields needs to develop as an NFL starter.
“Where he’s been at, and the way he’s growing, and just for him to get these reps,” Nagy said. “But at the same point in time, there is the safety issue, too, with making sure that he doesn’t get to a point where things get worse. So we got to monitor that. We got to keep an eye on that.
“I think that regardless of everything, we always want to make sure that all our players, we’re not putting them at more risk regardless of who you are. Obviously, there’s more magnitude to everybody else and to us with Justin and being the quarterback and touching the football every play and throwing and that sort of thing. So we’ll have to keep that in mind.”
