If quarterback Justin Fields is traded, it’s the duty of the Bears locker room to handle his departure well, cornerback Jaylon Johnson said.
“We know the business that we’re in,” he said Monday. “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.”
Johnson wants him to return.
“I know what it would do to keep him here. I know how we would feel with him here …" he said. “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.”
The Bears are expected to draft USC quarterback Caleb Williams first overall. Fields’ market value will be settled soon, after the initial wave of free agency.
Johnson is one of the Bears veterans — along with receiver DJ Moore, among others — who have been in support of Fields’ return dating back to last season. Johnson sounded as if a trade would not lead to a locker-room fracture, though.
“We’re all here to win ballgames,” Johnson said. “So I don’t think it’s about necessarily our feelings or, ‘Oh, well, you did this.’ We’re all here to win games. So whoever [general manager] Poles brings in, whoever the staff brings in to help us win games, that’s who we’re going to rock with.”
