Ex-NFL coach Mike Martz explains why Justin Fields-led Bears offense reminds him of 0-16 Lions

The Bears may have to wait a long, long time for their next win.

Mike Martz has seen both sides of success on the football spectrum: he was a Super Bowl-winning coach with the Rams on the Greatest Show on Turf, but he’s also been at the forefront of some very bad offenses.

One such team was his brief stint with the Lions: Martz’s Detroit teams lacked offensive talent, resulting in two top-flight offensive lines in 2006 and 2007. His last season in Detroit preceded the Lions’ 0-0 draw. 16 season in 2008.

Martz sees similarities between the offensive talent on this roster and what the Bears and Justin Fields will be dealing with next season. Martz recently wrote a column for The 33rd Team explaining why he’s not the biggest fan of what Chicago is offering this year and saying Fields isn’t in the best position to succeed

Then there’s Justin Fields from Chicago. Fields is a guy who makes a lot of mistakes and isn’t particularly accurate at times. He’s not a fast-reading and reacting guy, and he’s on a terrible team. But I don’t know if I’ve seen offense this bad since the 0-16 Detroit Lions. You just don’t have anyone there. … It’s a bad football team at the moment. …

It’s going to be a tough career for (Fields) there. And I’ve seen a lot of really good players go to bad teams and then their careers just never took off, and I think that’s going to happen with Fields.

I also have questions about whether he can really react quickly. I think he’s a talented guy as a passer but you don’t know how to rate him because he just has nothing around him.

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Martz would go on to say that he empathizes with Fields and feels that if he ended up in a better situation than Chicago, maybe with the 49ers, he’d be better off.

Coming from the Matt Nagy era, the Bears underwent a complete facelift in both the coaching ranks and front office, dropping Nagy and GM Ryan Pace and replacing them with Matt Eberflus and Ryan Poles, respectively.

It’s been a relatively quiet off-season for the Poles, and by Martz’s point, the Bears’ talent for offensive ability, particularly their wide receiver space, is looking pretty rough as they enter the final stages of preseason.

Martz wouldn’t predict the Bears going winless next season, but he’s clearly reminded of winless teams for a reason.