Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields threw a perfect pass 20 yards, through two Tampa Bay Buccaneers defenders and into the arms of wide receiver Chase Claypool in the end zone on Sunday at Raymond James Stadium.

Claypool whipped the ball toward the wall and pumped both arms in celebration of his first touchdown catch with the Bears — nine games, 10 1/2 months and many, many questions after he arrived in Chicago via a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

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The play in the Bucs’ 27-17 win over the Bears came after a week of intense scrutiny about Claypool’s place with the team — both from fans and from inside Halas Hall — following the 25-year-old’s lackluster effort in Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers.

When Bears general manager Ryan Poles spoke to Bears announcer Jeff Joniak on the pregame radio show Sunday, his answer to an inquiry about Claypool certainly sounded like an ultimatum for the player Poles decided last November was worth a second-round draft pick. Whether Claypool answered it in an up-and-down, still-not-good-enough performance for the entire offense remains a question.

“I would say really for anyone on our team, there’s a standard for how we’re going to play football here, and if you can’t rise to that standard and live in that space, it’s going to be hard to perform for the Chicago Bears,” Poles said. “With Chase, I think he’s a guy that has all the motivation in the world to be a good football player. He’s got to clean some things up. We had some good conversations. I expect to see him make those changes, and if he doesn’t then we’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do after that.”

The touchdown catch was a big play, but still just one for an offense that netted 236 yards.

Fields targeted Claypool eight times, and he had three catches for 36 yards. Midgame, a clip already was circulating on social media showing Claypool falling down while trying to block on Fields’ 1-yard touchdown run in the first quarter, but Claypool also was complimented on the broadcast for a block he made on Roschon Johnson’s 29-yard run.

He committed offensive pass interference one play before Fields threw a backbreaking pick-six to Shaq Barrett in the fourth quarter to put the Bucs up by the final score. Claypool said he thought it was a run play, not a pass to Khalil Herbert. And Bucs safety Antoine Winfield broke up another pass to Claypool that turned into Fields’ second interception.

But the production was enough to prompt Claypool to speak with reporters after the game, which he had avoided in the locker room the entire week after the Packers game.

“In the moment, (the touchdown) was nice, for sure, finally helping the team the way I wanted to, leading back to last season,” Claypool said. “It was a good week, a lot of lessons learned and a lot of progress made. So I’m going to keep that journey going.”

Poles’ comments Sunday came after coach Matt Eberflus didn’t immediately shoot down the idea that Claypool could be inactive against the Buccaneers because of the showing in the 38-20 loss to the Packers. The 6-foot-4, 238-pound receiver had missed blocks and had drops that contributed to the offense’s poor performance.

“There’s good games and bad games, and if you highlight all the bad plays in the game, it makes it look worse than it was,” Claypool said when asked about his performance against the Packers. “It’s easy to point out bad things. But they get paid a lot of money, too, and they’re going to make plays. Those are plays I want back, and I want to make all those plays, but it’s an unrealistic expectation.”

Claypool said he approached Bears coaches last week to talk over what went wrong against the Packers.

Wide receivers coach Tyke Tolbert said later in the week he tried to find the right button to push with Claypool to bring out the right attitude. He said Claypool arrived early to Halas Hall and meetings and hustled during practices last week.

The Bears then kept Claypool active Sunday instead of Equanimeous St. Brown, a receiver known for his blocking ability.

“I texted them and asked if we could talk, just for my own sake, and tried to find any type of thing that could help me progress the way I want to and learn from the mistakes the way I wanted to,” Claypool said. “(The conversations) were good. They told me what they wanted from me, so I made sure I delivered on that throughout the week.”

A lowlight reel of Claypool’s plays from Week 1 circulated on social media last week, intensifying the criticism.

Claypool said he didn’t know people outside of the Bears “were dragging me through the mud” until his family texted him to check up on him.

“I was a little confused when they did that,” Claypool said. “I don’t go on Twitter. It’s just a breeding ground for hate. I don’t think it’s good. I know what I have to fix. I don’t need other people who think they know the game to tell me what I need to do. I definitely know exactly what I need to fix, and I made sure I did that this week.”

Eberflus said Sunday he thought Claypool’s effort was good against the Bucs.

But if Claypool is going to quiet the questions, he and the offense are going to have to do more. The Bears scored a touchdown on their first drive of the game and then sputtered until the drive that ended in Claypool’s touchdown in the fourth quarter.

“It’s hard to place a finger on (the offensive struggles),” Claypool said. “If 10 people are doing a good job and one person isn’t, like me when I think it’s a run play and it’s a screen (on the pass interference), that’s my fault. Little things like that. Sometimes all 11 guys have to be in sync and doing their job, and sometimes that doesn’t happen. So execution is a big part of that, and we’ll continue to get better.”