5 Justin Fields over/unders for Chicago Bears in 2022

1. 49 sacks, 8.7%. sack rate

This is not talked about nearly enough, but may be the most important stat of Justin Fields and his trajectory. He has to stop taking as many sacks as he did during his rookie season. Last season he had taken 36 sacks, an 11.8% sack rate.

Everyone wants to blame the offensive line, but plenty of sacks were on Fields as well. That is fair because he is a rookie, but even for rookies, he was high. Only names such as Dwayne Haskins and Mike Vick were worse, and Vick is an entirely different quarterback.

Still, almost every name with a high sack rate as a rookie dropped significantly in year two.

Blake Bortles went from 10.4 to 7.8. McNabb went from 11.5 to 7.3, and Haskins dropped from 12.5 to 7.7. Vick went from 15 to 7, and even though Josh Allen was not as high he dropped from 8 to 7.6. Only Akili Smith, who had an 11% rate as a rookie and jumped to 11.9% in year two saw his rate increase.

So, if Fields does get worse from his 11.8% sack rate you could say that he may not make it as an NFL quarterback. Still, almost everyone dropped significantly here, and you can see that most of his peers lived between 7-7.8% in sack rate.

If he can drop his sack rate from nearly 12% to below 8%, it would be excellent, and history says that most quarterbacks can get that done from year one to year two.

With that in mind, we are going to go under on Justin Fields sacks, and assume that even if the line is worse, the growth of quarterback from year one to year two will overcome that.