Wide receiver DJ Moore was the biggest Justin Fields fan among many in the Bears’ locker room last year. From the time Fields and Moore stepped onto the Halas Hall practice field as teammates in offseason workouts last season, the connection was a natural.
“They look like they’re best friends,” safety Jaquan Brisker said last June.
Sure enough, Moore had the best season of his six-year NFL career with Fields as his quarterback — career-highs of 96 receptions, 1,364 yards, eight touchdowns and 80.2 yards per game.
After the season, Moore actively advocated for the Bears to keep Fields despite having the No. 1 overall pick and a chance at USC’s Caleb Williams. But predictably, Moore came around almost instantly when the Bears traded Fields and drafted Williams.
“Business is business,” Moore said, echoing a tweet he sent out the day Fields was traded. “I’d seen it coming, so … he was the quarterback last year. Now we’ve got Caleb. We’re going to ride through h-e-l-l and back with him, so I’m just looking forward to seeing what he puts out.”
Losing a veteran he had chemistry with in Fields and starting over with a rookie quarterback in a new offense under coordinator Shane Waldron normally would be a detriment to an established receiver such as Moore. But Williams is not just any rookie quarterback.
With Williams getting acclimated to the NFL and everybody on the field learning the Bears’ offense under Waldron, it likely will be a while before Moore establishes a connection with the rookie quarterback. But he likes what he sees so far.
“You can see that the natural leadership is there. The natural arm talent is there,” Moore said. “Everything about him [stands out] — it’s just always a positive thing. Even when he has a bad play, he’s looking to learn real fast right after. That’s all you can ask of him — for him to quickly forget but also learn at the same time.”
As for first impressions of Waldron’s offense, “I love it,” Moore said. “Everybody can touch the ball. It’s complex, but you know there’s going to be detail in what you’ve got to do, so you really got to study.”
It seems inevitable that the Bears offense will be a work in progress early in the regular season — and maybe all season, based on previous experiences with new coordinators. But Moore indicated he expects it to be productive sooner rather than later,
Asked how long it would take to get up to full speed in Waldron’s offense, More joked, ‘Next week?” But more seriously, he said, “I don’t know. It’s a long time. You’ve got [the offseason program]. You’ve got training camp … preseason. By the first week, we need to be clicking on all cylinders.”
Bears coach Matt Eberflus is counting on Moore to lead the way as the Bears use a rookie quarterback to take an important second step — potentially a giant leap — of the Bears’ latest rebuild.
“Our best [players have] got to be our hardest workers and they’ve got to be our best finishers and they’ve got to be available to practice and DJ certainly is that,” Eberflus said. “He’s as tough as they come and he is a great teammate and our hardest worker and one of our most talented guys.
“That’s the example for all of the young guys to follow because No. 1 [they see] the talent, but then they see the work ethic. That’s what I always tell [players] — even like Keenan [Allen], DJ, Tremaine, Tez [Montez Sweat] — all the guys that are really good players in this league, they have to be our hardest workers. They gotta be the guys that are the example.”
Even in the best-case scenario, Moore’s mellow vibe and general good nature figures to be a boon for the Bears. With the addition of the veteran Allen (a six-tine Pro Bowl receiver) and first-round rookie wide receiver Rome Odunze (the No. 9 pick in the draft), Moore will have more competition than ever for No. 1 receiver status and the numbers that come with it.
“Shoot, I went from, I don’t know who was here — now you’ve got Keenan, Rome, Velus [Jones], Tyler [Scott]. You’ve got endless playmakers in there,” Moore said. “Like I said, it’s probably going to be a race to a thousand [yards] now. I don’t know who’s going to get there first, but it’s going to be a race.”