Chicago Bears: Justin Fields rookie season review: completion percentage

Justin Fields finished his rookie season and now we can look back and see how the Chicago Bears future signal-caller compared to other rookies of past years. Bears fans have to remember that while Fields was in a bad situation, plenty of rookie quarterbacks are drafted into bad situations, so comparing rookie-to-rookie data should give us a perspective of where he stands and how other are similar players fared.

With that in mind, we will look at all rookie quarterbacks with at least 200 pass attempts since 1990. That should give us a better look at similar athletes, and passing numbers to Justin Fields.

Justin Fields rookie season completion percentage with Chicago Bears

Justin Fields had a 58.89% completion rate during his rookie season. This ranks 34th out of 88 rookie quarterbacks. That is above average, but not quite near the top, where most of the successful rookies lie.

While first-year success is not a perfect indicator, it is clear that players with higher completion rates in their rookie season tend to perform better than those with the worst.

The top five before this season are Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, Ben Roethlisberger, Robert Griffin, and Joe Burrow. The bottom five are Craig Whelihan, Kerry Collins, Donovan McNabb, Ryan Leaf, and Heath Shuler.

Of the 88 quarterbacks who threw 200 passes as rookies, only 17 could be classified as players who went on to be long-term trusted starters. There are 35 quarterbacks that could get the bust label, and 37 that were quality backups, or spot starters- essentially in between.

Of the 17 long-term starters, 11 had a better completion rate than Fields, and six did not. Derek Carr, Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, Matt Stafford, Donovan McNabb, and Josh Allen had a worse completion rate in their rookie season and went on to have success.

On the flip side, only five players were above him and went onto be busts. That means that 30 of the 54 players with a worse completion rate than him turned out to bust in the NFL. Six of those 54 players turned out to be just fine, and 18 of those players were in between.

Five names slightly above him, but still with a completion rate below 60% included

Cam Newton
Trevor Lawrence
Mitchell Trubisky
Mike Glennon
Blake Bortles

Five names slightly below him with a completion rate still above 58% include

EJ Manuel
Dwayne Haskins
Jameis Winston
Ryan Tannehill
Andy Dalton

Plenty of reactions can be taken away from those 10 names. This will be the first of many articles where we dive into the stats of Justin Fields’ rookie season and start to find out exactly what he brought, and how high his bust potential is.