We are nearly halfway through the 2022 NFL regular season. The Chicago Bears are sitting at 3-5 on the year and tied with the Packers for second place (third due to a current tie-breaker) in the NFC North. Justin Fields has helped lead this team to a current win total that many analysts thought would be the team’s total win total by year’s end. There are many reasons for the Bears’ success, but one player stands ø¨t from a fantasy perspective.
Two months ago, in an article on this site, I suggested drafting Justin Fields as your bench QB who I thought could beat his ADP (average draft position) of QB17 and bring upside for fantasy football. This initially did not look great in the first four games seeing his fantasy scoring and weekly fantasy football finishes for the position:
- Week 1: 14.64 fantasy points – QB23
- Week 2: 9.80 fantasy points – QB27
- Week 3: 6.94 fantasy points – QB31
- Week 4: 10.16 fantasy points – QB26
Justin Fields is a major fantasy football riser at this point in the 2022 season
Why was he performing so poorly for fantasy? You can point to a number of factors. I will always mention how I feel no QB in the NFL was set up to be less successful in terms of Fields’ offensive-line quality along with the WR room that I felt was the worst in the NFL. Fields also was not throwing the ball much — averaging 16.75 passing attempts through four weeks.
Fields was not throwing well with his limited opportunities — throwing a TD-INT ratio of 2-4 and having a completion percentage of 50% or lower in three of these four games. Fields ran the ball for over 50 rushing yards just once.