The “Breakout” of Justin Fields
After back-to-back weeks of some of the greatest rushing games from a QB in NFL history, NFL fans are VERY high on Justin Fields of the Chicago Bears.
In the 2022 season so far, almost seemingly a parallel universe of the NFL we have grown accustomed to seeing. The Giants and Jets are good. Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson are borderline embarrassing themselves on six-loss teams, the reigning Super Bowl Champions will miss the playoffs, Geno Smith is leading the preseason’s worst ranked team to a playoff berth. Even Tom Brady has looked like a mortal this year, capable of coming up short on an occasional basis. What a strange world.
Because all of these events flipping the NFL world as we know it upside down, fans are left scrambling to decide which side of the spectrum to stand on: Do we stick with what the past has told us, or do we change our opinions in the face of new evidence? All these polarizing questions leave fans conflicted.
However, while there might be a case to be made for both sides of these matters, something more ludicrous is the shocking opinion the majority of NFL fans have wrote off as fact in the past month: Justin Fields has officially arrived. Justin Fields has now blossomed, has developed from the ugly duckling into the beautiful swan, a franchise quarterback capable of leading a contending team to victories in decisive games.
It sounds wonderful. The Chicago Bears having a competent quarterback for the first time since the mid-1980s? One problem (of many for the Bears): Justin Fields still isn’t good at throwing the football.
Deep-rooted problems don’t get fixed overnight. While I’ll be the first to admit that Fields’ last four games have been a spectacular run, a four game stretch of nine touchdowns to two interceptions become much less impressive when you take into consideration that Fields hasn’t thrown for 200 yards or more in a single one of the four contests…in which the Bears lost three. A healthy portion of the blame goes to other places on a dysfunctional Bears team, but the bigger problem is that Fields’ dominant run is on a timer counting down rapidly.
The reason for this lies in Fields’ tear being fueled by two of the best quarterback rushing performances in NFL history, but Fields’ athleticism was never in question. The questions around his passing abilities still hold as strong as before, and for a QB who ranks second-highest in the NFL in the Bad Throw Percentage Metric at 22.0% on the season as well as posting the third-lowest On Target Percentage in the league, behind only a quarterback who was benched and one who was a backup to begin with. While these metrics reflect his whole season, he also tallied a completion percentage under 62% in four of his last five games, supposedly his “breakout” games. Fields’ putrid 146.9 passing yards per game is dead last in the league, behind multiple backup quarterbacks that filled in throughout the year, per ESPN’s statistics. Lastly, he holds onto the ball too long far too often, misses open receivers, and reads the field too slow. Fields has been sacked the most out of every quarterback in the league (33), worse than even Joe Burrow behind the horrendous offensive line in Cincinnati. The last few games have been better, but the small recent sample size looks a lot less optimistic compared to the bigger picture of the full season.
The people who are overly critical about Kyler Murray this season are the people who say Fields is a better quarterback. These fans don’t realize that Fields has the same amount of bad throws as Kyler (40)…on nearly half the attempts, 187 to 360. Yes, Fields is an exceptional athlete. But fans raving about Fields are using his outlier rushing performances and gaudy fantasy football points to justify his coming-of narrative. No one was skeptic of the running ability, but the passing potential he holds. When teams inevitably force him to stay in the pocket to make consistent reads and accurate throws, the stigma surrounding Fields will quickly plunge.