Tracking Chicago Bears QB Justin Fields progress through five games

While the Chicago Bears lost on Sunday, it was the closest thing to a morale win as you can find. The team came back from a 21-3 hole, and even more important than that was the growth of Justin Fields. Matt Eberflus said that Sunday was one of the best games of his career.

So, now that he has played five games in this new offensive system, it is worth looking into the numbers to see if he actually is progressing. Thanks to Rbsdm.com, we can look at advanced stats such as EPA, CPOE, and a combination of the two. Essentially, EPA is looking at how much value the player is adding, and CPOE is looking at the accuracy. So, how has Fields looked as an accurate passer and playmaker?

Tracking Justin Fields’ progress with Chicago Bears

Below you can see his CPOE, which is completion percent over expected. The orange is the week-by-week trajectory, and the blue is a cumulative look, so the orange should be more erratic.

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In week two, Fields pieced some things together but you can see the strong rise from this game. His CPOE dropped in week three, but started to go up again, so no we are seeing two straight games on the rise from the cumulative stat.

Below, is his EPA. This time, the cumulative is in orange. So, you can see that while he was completing more passes in week two, the EPA was much more, mainly from sacks taken and turnovers.

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Still, he has steadily improved his EPA the past three weeks, and his cumulative is now starting to show some life. He made a few big plays off-script in week one, then had a down week two, built his cumulative number back up in weeks three and four, then finally had a game worth raising his total up.

Lastly, the combination of EPA and CPOE. The cumulative is in blue.

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Overall, the high completion rate in week two had his overall look better, but he fell back down in week three, mainly from the turnovers. In Week four, he played better, then you can see that week five is the first real-time that he scored high in both areas, instead of one or the other.

So, is it growth from Justin Fields, or did he just have one good game? We will have to continue to see how he plays to get the real answer for that. Over the first four games, things were too up and down to say that he was steadily growing, although the combination of weeks four and five may be the best he has played so far.

This sets up well for him playing Washington, a defense that could be susceptible to a growing quarterback.