Column: What Jalen Hurts’ record-breaking contract means for QB Justin Fields and the Chicago Bears

Five years, $255 million. With more than $179 million guaranteed.

That’s the new bar in the NFL for “forever quarterbacks,” those undeniable game-changing engines of championship-hopeful teams. he Philadelphia Eagles set that bar Monday and Jalen Hurts cleared it like a gold-medal pole vaulter, continuing to capitalize on his breakthrough 2022, when he finished second in the league’s MVP voting and propelled his team to Super Bowl LVII.

Hurts, seven days shy of the third anniversary when he was drafted No. 53 overall, is now the highest paid player in league history.

Temporarily, of course.

Life in the NFL always moves at dizzying speeds, especially when it comes to identifying, developing or paying big money to starting quarterbacks.

If you blinked, you might not have noticed the jet pack Hurts used to get from draft weekend to the top of the NFL’s money mountain in three years.

In the coming months, fellow Class of 2020 quarterback Joe Burrow will also cash in his lottery ticket with the Cincinnati Bengals for a higher payout than Hurts just grabbed. Justin Herbert will have similar extension conversations with the Los Angeles Chargers this offseason. It’s a a reminder of how this eye-popping money game always advances.

Here in Chicago, it becomes more and more clear how loudly the clock seems to be ticking inside Halas Hall and what exactly is at stake in 2023 with Justin Fields challenged to better define his future and general manager Ryan Poles left to conduct the quarterback’s performance review.

Forget the rookie deal Fields signed with the Bears a little more than a month after he was drafted in 2021, an $18.8 million contract with a fifth-year option. It’s easy to get lost in the parameters of that deal and think the Bears have control of Fields through the 2025 season with a franchise tag in their pocket too for 2026. But that’s just not how the quarterback business works.

And Hurts’ big payday — again, less than three years after his draft night — was the latest reminder that a team’s true long-term commitment to a quarterback is almost always known after his third season and frequently backed by obvious evidence.

Hurts wasn’t a first-round pick, which meant his extension talks had greater urgency before entering the fourth and final season of his rookie deal in 2023. But watch how the Bengals work with Burrow in the near future. Monitor Herbert’s contract wishes as well and how and when they are granted.

Also keep Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa on the radar.

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Tagovailoa, the No. 5 pick in 2020, already has had the fifth-year option in his rookie deal exercised, a business transaction last month that locked in his 2024 base salary at a fully-guaranteed $23.17 million. Now it’s up to the Dolphins to figure out what happens next, even with the team likely using a “need to see more” approach in 2023.

So what exactly does this mean for Fields and the Bears? It means what it has always meant: this coming season is going to be pressure-packed and pivotal in many ways. We should have a lot more clarity on the overall direction of everything this time next year — both for the quarterback and the entire franchise.

If Fields makes a huge developmental leap and replaces the multitude of question marks on his scouting report with exclamation points? If his playmaking explosion as a runner is soundly complemented by his proficiency as a passer? Well, somebody better get new Bears President Kevin Warren — whose first official full day on the job was Monday — the code to the safe and a map to where the $300 million treasure chest is stashed.

In that scenario, a potential windfall could be in Fields’ lap by late spring or summer 2024.

But if Fields sputters in his third season? If the Bears passing attack remains an unproductive wreck? If the chief decision makers at Halas Hall — namely Poles — don’t see what they want as far as consistent production, pocket presence and quicker decision making? The offseason of 2024 could become an uncertain and uncomfortable place with Poles needing to reestablish his options and crystallize a new vision.

Consider this: from 2011 through 2019, 28 quarterbacks were drafted in the first round. Only 10 received a second contract from the team that drafted them, with the Lamar Jackson saga in Baltimore still pending. Of those 10, six of the last seven had their contract extensions done before they began their fourth seasons.

That’s just the way the business has progressed.

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The outlier there is Daniel Jones, who had an interesting journey to his massive extension last month for four years and $160 million, with $92 million guaranteed.

The New York Giants drafted Jones in 2019 under the watch of then-GM Dave Gettleman then declined his fifth-year extension in 2023 after his third season. But after Jones united with coach Brian Daboll last year and had a solid season with a surprise playoff berth and postseason road win over the Minnesota Vikings, new GM Joe Schoen offered up that new deal. For Jones, the breakthrough was as impressive as it was unlikely.

Of the 18 quarterbacks picked in Round 1 from 2011-19 who didn’t get a second contract from the team that drafted them, only five were still that franchise’s Week 1 starter heading into their fourth season. And that’s an uninspiring list that includes Jake Locker, Blake Bortles, Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota and Mitch Trubisky.

In short, the big decisions the Bears have to make about their most important position are coming. And soon.

By early May 2024, Poles will have to determine whether he wants to lock in Fields’ fully-guaranteed fifth-season option — likely in the ballpark of $25 million — for 2025. But more significantly, Poles will also need a better sense of whether he believes Fields really is the franchise’s “forever quarterback” and begin conducting the rest of his roster molding accordingly.

All of that will be shaped by what happens — or doesn’t happen — on the field in 2023.

The 2020 first-round quarterback class of Burrow, Tagovailoa, Herbert and Jordan Love is next in the cycle with Hurts’ new deal altering the landscape.

As confirmed Monday, the market for established franchise quarterbacks continues its steep climb. It’s an expensive journey to be certain. But it’s also one the Bears would love to take part in.