There hasn’t been a🍰 more polarizing ꦇstory in Chicago sports the last year than that of Justin Fields. A 2021 first-round pick of the franchise has gone from a savior to a bust and back to the future in the last six months.
The city is divided in its opinion of the talented quarterback. In his third 🀅season in the NFL, Fields had both good and bad moments. But he also suffered another injury that made him absent for many g🍸ames. His roller coaster 2023 season has caused Bears fans to engage in a civil war on social media about what to do under center in Chicago moving forward.
The Bears own the Panthers’ No. 1 pick in April’s NFL Draft and the possibility of drafting Caleb Williams🦩 has only amplified the story. Everyone in the city of Chicago has different opinions about what to do with the quarterback position. The NFL Draft is not for another 70 days, so Fields will be a big topic of conversation until then.
In the meantime, let’s try to evaluate what Justin Fields’ 2023 season was.
Justin Fields 2023 Report Card: Grading Scale and Definitions
A+, A, A-: Indicates excellent performance.
B+, B, B-: Indicates good performance.
C+, C, C-: Indicates satisfactory performance.
D+, D, D-: Indicate𓃲s less than satisfactory performance.
F: Indicates unsatisfactory performance
Passing Yardage & Efficiency
We will use yards per game for passing yardage in the report card instead of total passing yards because it accounts for missed games due to injury. Staying on the field is an important aspect o👍f the job, and it will be evaluated in this report. However, for accuracy, we will focus on the per game statistic.
We’re also going to use Football Reference’s Passing Success Rate (Succ%) for this subject area. According to this metric, a successful pass gains at least 40 percent of the yards required on first down, 60 percent on second down, and 100 percent on third or fourth down.
Finally, we’ll factor in passing completion percentage and passing yards per completion.
Fields averaged a career-best 197.1 passing yards per game in 2023. His previous marks were 149.5 and 155.8. While 197.1 is only roughly 20 yards below the league average passing yards per game (218.9), it’s still not a great mark. If we were to extrapolate that mark across 17 starts, Fields would still fall almost 400 yards shy of the league average for total passing yards in 2023. And remember, that’s just the league average, not the upper tier of passers. Fourteen quarterbacks in the NFL threw for more than 3,800 passing yards this season. The Bears have had just one quarterback throw for at least 3,800 yards since Erik Kramer did it in 1995.
Fields was near the bottom of the league in Passing Success Rate this season. His 38.4% mark ranks 29th among 32 qualified quarterbacks. For reference, Brock Purdy, Dak Prescott, Jared♊ Goff, Tua Tagovailoa, and Josh Allen led the league in this category. All of those quarterback🔯s posted Passing Success Rates north of 50 percent.
Fields’ 61.4 percent completion rate ranked 29th among 32 qualified quarterbacks this season. Kenny Pickett, Aidan O’Connell, Gardner Minshew II, and Josh Dobbs each had a similar number of starts and posted a higher completion percentage than Fields. The only qualifying quarterbacks Fields had a better completion percentage than in 2023 were Zach Wilson (60.1), Bryce Young (59.8), and Will Levis (58.4).
Digging deeper into the standard completion percentage statistic, Fields ranked 22nd in 2023 (among QBs with more than 200 drop-backs) according to PFF’s Adjusted Completion Percentage statistic. This metric accounts for dropped passes, throw-aways, spiked balls, batted passes, and passes where the QB was hit while they threw the ball.
The only data point in this group that’s saving Fields from a failing mark is his yards per completion. Fields averaged 11.3 yards per completion last season, which ranked 9th among qualified quarterbacks in 2023.
Passing Yardage & Efficiency Grade: C-
Pocket Efficiency
We’re going to use two key indicators to grade this subject area: sack percentage and average pocket time to throw/pressure.
Fields was sacked 44 times in 2023, good for 10.6 percent of his pass attempts. Fields sack percentage ranked 31st among 33 qualified quarterbacks. The Bears offensive line was ranked 19th this season by PFF due to absences of key playe🍨rs like Braxton Jones, Teven Jenkins, and 🌄Nate Davis during parts of the season.
However, ESPN has the Bears offensive lineman with a 64 percent pass block win rate — the fifth-best mark in the NFL. Pass block win rate is defined as the rate at which linemen can sustain their blocks for 2.5 seconds or longer. So, placing Fields’ astronomically high sack rate solely on the defense wouldn’t be fair. According to PFF, their unit was in the middle third. ESPN’s pass block win rate says that they can sustain blocks on pass plays for longer than 2.5 seconds 64% of the time.
According to Fantasy Pros, Fields had an average of 2.8 seconds of pocket time this season. Pocket time, by Fantasy Pros’ definition, is the duration in seconds from when the ball is snapped until the quarterback faces pressure. Fields’ 2.8 seconds of average pocket time was the fourth most in the NFL this season. Fields’ TTT (Average Time to Throw on all dropbacks) this season was 3.49.
Fields had a 48.9 PFF passing gra൲de when under pressure in 2023 which ranked 39th among qualified quarterbacks in the NFL.
Pocket Efficiency Grade: F
Explosiveness & Deep Ball
Who doesn’t love the deep ball? In this section, we will use different deep ball metrics to evaluate Justin Fields’ skill in throwing deep passes.
When it comes to throwing the deep ball, Justin Fields was one of the best in 2023. Fields owned a 96.7 PFF passing grade on throws greater than 20 yards. According to PFF, 14.1 percent of Fields’ pass attempts in 2023 were deep ball attempts. Fields completed 44.2 percent of his deep ball attempts last season.
We’ve all seen many times. But it wasn’t just Tonyan in that moment. The Bears, as a team, had serious problems with dropping deep balls this season. Fields’ deep ball drop percentage in 2023 was 17.9 percent, which ranked seventh-highest among quarterbacks with more than 30 deep ball attempts.
Among quarterbacks with 30-plus attempts of 20 or more yards, Fields ranked sixth in the league with a 114.6 passer rating on൲ those throws. Fields ranked fifth in the NFL in Big Time Throw Percentage (BTT%), defined as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or in𒐪to a tighter window).
Explosiveness & Deep Ball Grade: A
Ball Security
Justin Fields’ nine interceptions were a career-low in 2023, but he also played a career-low number of games. But also, Fields saw his interception percentage fall to 2.4 percent. That marks the second straight season in which it has dropped. Fields’ INT% was 3.7% as a rookie, 3.5% in 2022, and 2.4% in 2023. He also fumbled the ball 10 times, with nine of those fumbles recovered by the other team. In total, Fields turned the ball over 18 times ꩵlast season.
Fields had the 14th-highest turnover worthy play percentage (3.4%﷽) among quarterbacks with 200 or more dropbacks in 2023. According to PFF, a turnover-worthy play is a📖 pass that has a high chance of being intercepted or a mistake in handling the ball that results in a fumble.
Ball Security Grade: C+
Rushing
Justin Fields ran for 657 yards and four touchdowns in 2023. There was a lot of chatter this season about Fields running less than he did in 2022, but Fields registered 124 attempts in 13 games last season and 160 in 2022 when he ran for 1,143 yards. The number of times in which Fields ran the ball last season wasn’t drastically less than it was in 2022. But also, he played in two fewer games than he did last year.
Fields carried the ball fewer times per game in 2023, with 9.5 attempts compared to 10.6 in 2022, but not significantly less. Fields’ yards per attempt decreased from 7.1 to 5.3 in 2022. This explains the difference in yardage between the two seasons, despite having a similar number of attempts per game.
Fields ranked second in quarterback rushing yards in the NFL in 2023, right behind Lamar Jackson with 821 yards. This puts him firmly among the top rushing quarterbacks. Behind Jackson and Fields, Jalen Hurts rushed for 605 yards, Josh Allen rushed for 524 yards, and then Saints’ gadget player Taysom Hill ran for 401 yards.
In 2023, only three quarterbacks in the NFL ran for over 300 yards: Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, and Trevor Lawren🌠ce.
Rushing Grade: A
Clutch Factor
When it comes to clutch performances, Justin Fields doesn’t have many of them.
According to Pro Football Reference, Fields has two career fourth-quarter comebacks and three game-winning drives. In 2023, Fields was credited with a fourth-quarter comeback and a game-winning drive in the Bears’ victory over the Vikings on November 27.
Here’s how Fields ranked in quarterback efficiency in 2023 in the fourth quarter and overtime:
Clutch Factor Grade: F
Durability
Justin Fields played in 13 games in 2023, two less than last season🅷. Fields missed four games with a thum🍸b injury suffered against the Vikings in October. The sack was a result of Fields holding onto the ball too long, something Fields did far too often in 2023 and reflected heavily in his Pocket Efficiency grade above.
However, Fields four games missed all came from one injury, and given the amount of times he was hit this season, I’m going to lean toward a good performance here.
Durability Grade: B-
Overall 2023 Grade
I used a GPA system to calculate Justin Fields’ 2023 performance, focusing on Passing Yardage & Efficiency, Pocket Efficiency, Deep Ball, Ball Security, Rushing, Clutch Factor, and Durability. With a more weight placed on the more controllable factors.
Justin Fields 2023 GPA: 2.23
A 2.23 GPA is a “C” and that feels about right for Fields 2023 performance as a whole. Can a “C” grade convince Bears General Manager Ryan Poles and his team to trade the No. 1 pick and build around an average quarterback? Like Ryan Poles, you can make your own determination.
