Best comparison to Justin Fields rookie season with Chicago Bears

With reports that Justin Fields has been placed on the COVID-19 list, his 2021 rookie season with the Chicago Bears is officially over. This means that for the coming month’s fans are going to analyze and point out flaws and statistics of emphasis in his profile.

ESPN got ahead of the curve with an article a few weeks ago that compares the rookie season of Justin Fields to Josh Rosen, Blaine Gabbert, and Jimmy Clausen. This only makes sense in a broad view and not at all when you compare the style of play. You can look at numbers but have to step away from them when they tell you that Justin Fields, who runs a 4.4 is a similar quarterback to Jimmy Clausen.

QBR factors in rushing, but obviously not nearly enough because Justin Fields finished with 420 rushing yards, which is more than the three headline-grabbing quarterbacks combined. These are not the same quarterbacks.

In fact, when just looking at rushing stats, there are just 17 quarterbacks since 1970 to rush for 300 yards, and Justin Fields is 8th with his 420.

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Of course, Kevin Seifert is correct in one way that Justin Fields was not an elite passer and did lean on his legs a bit more than others to get on this list. In that regard, it is unfair to put him with Russell Wilson, Cam Newton, RG3, and Lamar Jackson.

Still, the Chicago Bears rookie has an ANY/A of 4.24, and this number includes sacks, interceptions, touchdowns, and yards per attempt into it. When looking at quarterbacks with over 300 rushing yards, and an ANY/A under five you see the list shrinks to Vince Young, Josh Allen, Trevor Lawrence, Geno Smith, Rick Mirror, Blake Bortles, DeShone Kizer, Troy Aikman, Donovan McNabb.

There are absolutely some misses in this group, but when looking at this group on the whole it is not quite as shocking as the three names ESPN mentioned. It also looks like a more realistic list of what Justin Fields’ skillset plays like.

In the case of McNabb, you see a very similar sack rate. In the case of Lawrence, we see two rookies from this class. However, the comparisons to put under the microscope are the more recent names such as Blake Bortles and Josh Allen. These two had similar rookie seasons to Fields and then went on diverging outcomes.

Below you can see how the three compare next to each other.

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Fields is better in yards per attempt and is more accurate than Allen. However, sacks are where Fields and Allen both struggle.  Below, thanks to RBSDM.com you can see how the three compare from an advanced stats perspective. The per-play metrics are multiplied by 10.

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You can see that Fields was the most successful from the expected points added. (EPA) + completion percent over expectations (CPOE). This mainly is aided by his CPOE, which is -2. Still, that is much better than Allen and Bortles who had poor accuracy sitting at -6.8 CPOE.

Overall Allen was a bit better in terms of expected points, mainly because the other two took so many sacks. Still,  in terms of success rate, they are all about the same.

The reality is that you can easily point to one number and compare Justin Fields to Josh Rosen, but when you watch football and dig a little deeper, the more relevant comparisons are Blake Bortles and Josh Allen.

This still does not say he is some superstar in the making, and that there is bust potential for sure. It also shows that we do not know much about quarterbacks after their rookie season because so often there are huge changes to the roster and coaching staff between years one and two.

So, when a Packers fan says that Fields has more interceptions than touchdowns, point to Josh Allen. When they say he has too many sacks, point to Donavan McNabb. Even note that Trevor Lawrence was arguably worse in his rookie season. It will help them realize that next year we have a lot to learn about the Chicago Bears rookie quarterback.