Kevin Warren reveals thoughts on Justin Fields, how the former Ohio State QB stepped up during COVID season

In 2020, when then-Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren announced the decision to cancel the conference football season, then-Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields led the charge to play the season. That movement succeeded when Warren announced the league would move forward with an eight-game, conference-only schedule.

Fast-forward more than two years. Warren is now taking over as president and CEO of the Chicago Bears, led by Fields — their 2021 first-round pick — at quarterback. Their relationships has been one of the biggest talking points after news broke of Warren’s pending hire to replace Ted Phillips, and he addressed it head-on in his introductory press conference Tuesday.

In fact, Warren sees a bit of himself in Fields and the way he handled the situation.

“I’ll say this. If I had been [a player] in the Big Ten at that time, I would’ve done the same thing,” Warren told reporters at Halas Hall. “And what that told me about Justin is he’s passionate. Now, my whole goal was trying to keep players safe. I appreciated him to be able to take that leadership role.

“So I was ecstatic — I called him on draft day — I was ecstatic when he got drafted by the Bears because that’s what you need from a leadership standpoint. But I have a strong personal relationship with him. He’s talented. He’s a leader. I loved his passion. I would’ve been the same way of being able to do it.”

Before he took over as Big Ten commissioner, Warren worked for the Minnesota Vikings, where he helped lead the charge to build U.S. Bank Stadium. Now, he’s looking at a similar situation in Chicago, where the Bears are working to build a new stadium in suburban Arlington Heights.

But that Minnesota connection led to a reunion with Fields when the Bears were in town to take on the Vikings. Warren had meetings at the same time and took in a game at the stadium he helped build. Naturally, he had to make a stop by the Bears’ locker room after the game.

“Interestingly enough, I’ve only been to one game in Minnesota since I left in 2019,” Warren said. “I was in Minnesota for some meetings and it was the weekend the Bears were playing. So I actually went to the game to say hello to Justin and a lot of our Big Ten folks … but I have the greatest amount of respect for him because I know he’s going to do everything that he possibly can with the talent that he has to be a leader. He wants to win championships.

“Those are the people that I want because if someone was not upset about playing, then I really would be concerned because I know if I was in the Big Ten and someone did what I did, I would’ve led a revolt to be able to play because that’s how passionate I was to take advantage of it. I think that’s great.”

Kevin Warren: Communication was key in building relationship with Justin Fields

After his press conference, Warren did an interview on the “Bernstein and Holmes Show” on 670 The Score and spoke further about his relationship with Fields. He preached the importance of communication in building their relationship and further explained why he made the initial decision to cancel that season.

“The way you build relationships back like that — especially with type-A individuals — is to be able to let them know why you did what you did,” Warren said. “And I think once people had a conversation with me and they recognized I did what I did is because I truly looked at all of our student-athletes like they were a son or daughter of mine, and I wanted to make sure they were safe. I’m not a doctor, and I followed the guidance of our medical personnel. It wasn’t anything personal.

“The easy thing for me to do would’ve been to say, ‘Let’s ignore the medical issues and just go and play.’ I think the more difficult decision was to do what I did, and that was to say, ‘Until we gather more information, let’s take the safer approach and then, once we gather information, let’s go back and play,’ which we did. And … even with all that, Ohio State still played in the national championship against Alabama.”