Key Numbers for Justin Fields

Justin Fields' rookie year must be thought of at this point like Mitchell Trubisky's rookie year.

It was wasted on a poor offense in an ill-advised scheme by a coach who got fired.

Fields gained a bit of knowledge about the speed of the NFL game, how pros approach certain aspects of weekly preparation and what can happen when your coach puts you behind only five blockers against a good blitz in Cleveland.

That's it, other than how to pick himself up off the ground after one of 36 sacks.

It led to some fairly mundane numbers for a rookie quarterback but more is expected now even with a rebuilding team.

In fact, Pro Football Focus has classified Fields for fantasy football purposes as a quarterback ahead of Jared Goff, Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence, Jameis Winston, Mac Jones, Daniel Jones, Zach Wilson, Ryan Tannehill, Matt Ryan and Carson Wentz for fantasy purposes as a top late-round QB to help owners missing out earlier in their draft. It's something, although it's just fantasy football, and it's better than what this website usually says about Bears players in fantasy ball.

In the real world, if Fields is to improve in Year 2 the way Trubisky did and up his passer rating by 18 points, he's going to need to improve several other numbers. The numbers are not complicated, unreliable subjective analytics like catchable balls thrown or deep ball completions. They are simple numbers that help make those more complicated figures better.

Here are the key numbers Fields must pad or decrease if he expects to make required progress. If he does it, his fantasy value increases exponentially and the Bears can expect their win total to climb, as well.

12

Fields fumbled the ball 12 times, tied with Kirk Cousins and Ben Roethlisberger for fourth most in the league. It must be remembered also that Fields only started 10 games and had 635 plays, or less than two-thirds of Bears offensive plays. He started fewer games than anyone ranked in the top 10 for fumbles. The Bears lost only five of those fumbles Fields made but almost every QB fumble helps kill a drive or does kill it. Pocket awareness and merely holding the ball in a place where it can't be swiped at can lower this number. If they can improve his delivery to eliminate the way he held the ball at risk more often and get the ball out of his hand faster, it would help, too. Fields needs to do what Joe Burrow did. Burrow had nine fumbles with only 10 starts as a rookie. In Year 2, he played every game and lowered the fumble total to five despite playing behind a bad line that allowed him to be sacked 51 times, 15 more times than when he played only 10 games.

10

Fields' interception total isn't abnormally high but is high for only 270 attempts. He tied for 18th most interceptions even though he had the 31st most pass attempts, leading to the 32nd lowest interception percentage. Like with fumbles, turning it over with interceptions gets a team beat faster than anything else.

7

Seven touchdown passes in 10 starts and essentially 10 full games played doesn't cut it even for rookies with bad teams. There were 33 quarterbacks in the NFL who threw more touchdown passes last year. So several backups had more TD passes than Fields, including one backup on his own team (Andy Dalton, 8). Fields' number needs to jump considerably, and a great deal depends on his assistance from teammates. Nothing makes a passer rating climb faster than more touchdown passes and fewer interceptions.

2

Two rushing touchdowns by Fields is very low for the speed he has and the potential as a runner. Rushing TDs by quarterbacks are always limited by opportunities in the red zone, an offense's troubles and how defenses spy him. This explains how Lamar Jackson and Russell Wilson could have two rushing TDs last year. But Jalen Hurts ran a 4.59-second 40 and had 10 rushing TDs last year and Josh Allen had six TDs and ran a 4.76. Fields ran a 4.4 40 time. So he needs to use his running ability better in the red zone and the Bears need to use it better than Matt Nagy did in their play calling and design.

30

Touched on already in fumbles, Fields can't be getting hit so much. He took 36 sacks, but he also got knocked down 30 other times. He can't be hit so much or his season will last only a few games. There is no reason a player with such great mobility should be sacked 36 times and hit 30 times. A poor offensive line is only part of this. Even with a bad line, a mobile QB has a chance to get out in the open and look for completions after plays break down and should not be hit. He can always throw away the ball, step out of bounds or run and slide. Fields doesn't handle these situations well enough yet.

159

That was Fields' completion total and it is going to climb as long as he plays more and throws more than 270 times but it needs to climb a lot. His completion percentage needs to be much higher than the 58.9% he had last year and so he needs more completions and better accuracy downfield as well as closer to the line. The time when Joe Namath could be considered a god despite completing 50.2% for the first five years of his career ended in the 1960s.

28

Just 28 completions of 20 yards or longer isn't going to do it for a passer who is supposed to be one of the best at throwing the deep ball to come into the NFL in years. At least that's how Pro Football Focus and Football Outsiders had billed Fields. Fields' yards per attempt needs to climb well above his 6.9 last year to be in the mid-to-high 7s. For a rookie, Fields' yards/attempt wasn't bad but even Trubisky managed to get his up to a career-best 7.4 in his second year. It can happen if he ups that total of 20-yard-plus completions.

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