{"id":38843,"date":"2023-10-17T12:38:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T16:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=38843"},"modified":"2023-10-17T12:39:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T16:39:06","slug":"the-break-out-justin-fields-is-running-out-of-chances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2023\/10\/17\/the-break-out-justin-fields-is-running-out-of-chances\/","title":{"rendered":"The Break Out: Justin Fields is running out of chances"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Photo via Todd Rosenberg\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/p>\n

After the two best games of his career, Justin Fields returned to the same slow-processing, indecisive passer he\u2019s been the last two seasons \u2014 and no one proved that more than his backup<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

By Sam Robb O’Hagan<\/em><\/p>\n

It would be difficult to find a backup quarterback better suited for these Chicago Bears than Tyson Bagent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bagent is bad. In his first appearance of the season Sunday, he committed two heinous turnovers \u2014 both of them high on the list of reasons why the Bears lost 19-13 to the Vikings \u2014 and looked like a talent-deficient passer.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Bagent, an undrafted rookie from a Division II school playing in the first game of his career, was immediately more confident and decisive than Justin Fields, the Bears\u2019 starter and former first-round pick playing in his 33rd.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bagent shouldn\u2019t have been important. But as the starter ahead of him played another poor game, resorting to the same problems that have plagued him for most of his time in the NFL, Bagent became the best window for the Bears into why, exactly, Fields is not their guy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watch Bagent\u2019s pass to DJ Moore here.<\/span><\/a> Look at how <\/span>fast <\/span><\/i>everything happened in the pocket.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moore was running an over route, behind two linebackers but in front of two deep safeties. It was open, but it was a throw that needed to be layered between two levels of the defense: the type of muddy picture that can be easy for a quarterback to deny.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bagent hit the top of his drop and <\/span>immediately <\/span><\/i>committed to the throw. This was the 10th dropback of his <\/span>career<\/span><\/i>!<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a bad ball. A hospital ball, in fact, that led Moore up the field directly into the path of the nearest safety, instead of over the middle of the field into open space. But it was <\/span>on time<\/span><\/i>, as many of Bagent\u2019s throws were, because he took the snap, recognized it was open, and decisively ripped a deep throw to his best receiver.<\/span><\/p>\n

How refreshing of a sight it was in Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because <\/span>here\u2019s the sack<\/span><\/a> in which Fields suffered the dislocated thumb that took him out of the game. Moore was again running an in-breaking route beyond the sticks, behind the shallow linebackers, and in front of a dropping defender. Moore worked wide open in the middle of the field, directly in front of Fields\u2019 line of vision, who was sitting in a perfect<\/span> pocket.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The play worked flawlessly. Fields did not throw the football. His undrafted rookie backup did.<\/span><\/p>\n

The resulting sack was Fields\u2019 24th of the season \u2014 third-most in the league \u2014 and 115th of his 33-game career. Per Stathead, Fields\u2019 115 sacks are the second-most among all quarterbacks since 1970 in their first 33 games.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sacks are enigmatic of what makes Fields such a poor pocket passer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fields is a good decision-maker, and he\u2019s capable of processing beyond his first read. That is what is so frustrating about his struggles \u2014 that he clearly knows what to do. He just doesn\u2019t do it fast enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

On every one of his dropbacks, you can see the cogs spinning in Fields\u2019 head. You can almost <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> him moving from read to read \u2014 finding his receivers downfield, deciding if they\u2019re open, deciding if he wants to throw the ball, and then, finally, moving on to the next. That these cogs are spinning is a good thing, but they are spinning so slow they\u2019re tanking Fields\u2019 sustainability as a pocket passer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fields is taking 3.04 seconds to throw the ball on average, per Next Gen Stats, which is fourth-most in the league. In 2022, Fields again finished fourth, and in his rookie year, he was seventh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those numbers support the film \u2014 Fields processes what\u2019s happening in front of him too slowly, he holds on to the ball too long, and eventually, he takes entirely preventable sacks. The end product? 115 sacks in 33 games. One hundred and fifteen!<\/span><\/p>\n

Fields\u2019 processing speed is only part of the problem. When he finally works to the right read, he is agonizingly indecisive and, despite being one of the league\u2019s most gifted quarterbacks, Fields is a shockingly timid passer.<\/span><\/p>\n

His refusal to throw to Moore on Sunday was the latest in a damning reel of pass-ups. In Week 1 against the Packers, <\/span>Moore again worked wide open on a deep in-breaking route<\/span><\/a>, and Fields, sitting in a clean pocket, turned him down. Earlier in that game, <\/span>Darnell Mooney found himself wide open on a sit route in the middle of the field<\/span><\/a>, directly in front of his quarterback, and the ball wasn\u2019t thrown.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fields\u2019 misses were the reason he scrambled 67 times in 2022. Of course, Fields made remarkable plays off of those scrambles, and he ran for the second-most rushing yards in a season by a quarterback in NFL history. But when his scrambles are the result of turning down a wide-open receiver, Fields is making things harder than they need to be. He\u2019s also, critically, making himself vulnerable to negative, drive-ending plays \u2014 the sacks that he\u2019s now taken 115 times.<\/span><\/p>\n

These turn-downs are especially frustrating because Fields has an elite arm. He <\/span>can<\/span><\/i> make all of these throws with relative ease. There is no explanation beyond the bottom line \u2014 throw the football, Justin!<\/span><\/p>\n

After passing for 617 yards and eight touchdowns in the two games before Sunday, by far the most in a two-game span of his career, Fields again had the chance to prove that he was finally putting things together.<\/span><\/p>\n

The stars couldn\u2019t have aligned much better. The Vikings\u2019 defense blitzes at a historic rate \u2014 <\/span>56 percent <\/span><\/i>of the time before Sunday, according to Pro Football Reference \u2014 and they do it out of necessity, because, simply, their defenders aren\u2019t very good.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a perfect test for Fields; a blitz-happy but susceptible defense that would force him to play fast and get rid of the football. There was no secret. Fields and the Bears knew the blitzes were coming, and they knew what to do against them. There was no better barometer for Fields\u2019 true progress.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Minnesota blitzed at a 71.9% clip<\/span><\/a>, Fields banged his head into the same walls \u2014 processing everything painfully slowly and hesitating to throw the ball \u2014 before it eventually knocked him out of the game.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the Bears, it was another catastrophic missed opportunity for their young quarterback. But even more than that, it was a reminder of just how back-breaking his problems are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because Bagent, without the experience, the pedigree, or the talent, immediately showed them the answers.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo via Todd Rosenberg\/Getty Images) After the two best games of his career, Justin Fields returned to the same slow-processing, indecisive passer he\u2019s been the last two seasons \u2014 and no one proved that more than his backup. By Sam Robb O’Hagan It would be difficult to find a backup quarterback better suited for these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21477,"featured_media":38844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1024,1050,1035,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38847,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38843\/revisions\/38847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}