Cornerback Jaylon Johnson secured his future with the Bears by agreeing to a four-year deal with the team after receiving the franchise tag last week, but quarterback Justin Fields has no certainty about his future.
Fields is widely expected to be traded as the Bears move forward with a rookie quarterback they will select with the first overall pick in April. Johnson and other Bears players have expressed their desire to see Fields remain under center in Chicago and Johnson reiterated his belief in Fields at a press conference in Chicago on Monday before adding that he doesn’t think a choice to go the other way is going to lead to any issues with members of the roster.
“We’ll all have our opinions, our emotions, but as far as the locker room staying together, I think we have the right guys in the locker room to keep everything together, to keep us together. . . . We know the business that we’re in,” Fields said, via Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times. “So I feel like it wouldn’t be mature of us as a locker room not to rally together in spite of having Justin leave.”
The Bears have not reached an agreement to trade Fields at this point and they’ve seen players like Kirk Cousins and Russell Wilson find homes with teams that have been mentioned as potential bidders for the quarterback’s services, so it remains to be seen when Johnson and other Bears will have to deal with news of a significant change in the quarterback room.