Domonique Foxworth: Justin Fields Should Demand a Trade

Domonique Foxworth launched a new podcast this week titled The Domonique Foxworth Show. The first episode was released on Wednesday and the former NFL cornerback kicked things off with a bang by stating his opinion that Justin Fields should demand a trade from the Chicago Bears.

How did he get there? Well, Foxworth was holding a discussion about the state of the second-year QBs with co-host Charlie Kravitz. Kravitz noted that it may be years before Fields gets a chance to thrive in an environment tailor-made to his skillset and there's a chance he never gets to that point while in Chicago. This led to Foxworth explaining why he thinks Fields should demand a trade, even if he's only one year into his career. From the 25:40 mark:

The basis of Foxworth's argument is that Fields has agreed to give the Bears his best effort as an employee. But the Bears are not fulfilling their end of the bargain insofar as ensuring Fields is in the best possible position to succeed. It is through their own incompetence rather than malevolence or a desire to tank, admittedly, but it doesn't change the fact that Chicago's decision-making has already put Fields far behind the eight-ball. Thus, Foxworth believes it is Fields' right to try and force his way out of that bad situation for the good of his career.

Nothing Foxworth said about the Bears is wrong. They are a very bad team loaded with bad players due to extremely poor decision-making by the previous front office. As a result, the new front office had to dedicate their offseason of resources to fixing as many of the holes in the roster as possible instead of helping Fields in whatever way they can. Fields is arguably in the worst position out of all his peers, which is remarkable considering Trevor Lawrence had Urban Meyer as a coach for one year.

On the other hand! Fields is on the Bears for a reason-- they were bad before they selected him. It is unrealistic to expect all the problems riddling the roster to be fixed immediately. If every good young player did as Foxworth suggests and demand a trade due to bad roster-making decisions, the bad teams would never get better and eventually the good teams would run out of picks and players to trade. Along with all the other issues at hand here that doesn't sound very fun or interesting.

Foxworth makes quality points about the concept of player empowerment and the implicit agreement made between employee and employer but it's a little absurd to punish the Bears for not succeeding in their effort to put Fields in a good spot because those efforts are genuine. That's all you can really ask for. The employer will not always make the right decision, just like how Fields won't always make the right read. Both sides simply have to hope the other is giving their best effort instead of leaping to the nuclear option immediately.

But I guess Fields demanding a trade in his second season would be tremendous content. So we could go either way.