Justin Fields’ contract with the New York Jets is a fair one based on his status at the quarterback position. He received $30 million guaranteed, which places him 26th among quarterbacks. That is approximately where he’d land in most rankings of the NFL’s starting quarterbacks (whether statistically or in the public consensus), making it a fair contract in that regard.
However, $30 million guaranteed is still a hefty investment, even if it places Fields on the lower end of starting quarterbacks. It is the largest sum of guaranteed money that the Jets have ever given to an outside free agent on offense – yes, in franchise history. Thus, it shows that the Jets feel strongly about him in some form.
The Jets did not make this type of investment because of who Fields is. They made it because of who he could be.
Most quarterbacks with Fields’ resume would not earn anything close to $30 million guaranteed. Among the 38 quarterbacks with at least 750 pass attempts since 2021, Fields ranks 34th in passer rating (83.9). He is ahead of only Davis Mills, Kenny Pickett, Bryce Young, and Zach Wilson. Simply put, Fields’ career body of work is not close to that of a quality starting quarterback.
Fields, though, is a unique case. The league has not seen many free agent quarterbacks like him, if any. He is a 26-year-old former first-round pick with elite physical tools, and while his passing has been disappointing, he has already proven himself to be one of the most dangerous rushing quarterbacks of all time. That is an unusual package of potential for a signal-caller on the open market.
To boot, Fields hit free agency at a point where the league has witnessed a recent wave of late-blooming former high draft picks. This does wonders for the market value of quarterbacks like Fields. The breakouts of Sam Darnold, Geno Smith, and Baker Mayfield will buy extra leeway for quarterbacks who were highly drafted and possess obvious potential but struggled to break through within the first few years of their careers.
Can Fields follow in the footsteps of Darnold, Smith, and Mayfield? It is absolutely possible; to pull it off, he needs to make strides in these three particular areas.
Taking fewer sacks
Contrary to popular belief, sacks are primarily the quarterback’s responsibility. It is the offensive line’s job to prevent pressure. The quarterback’s job is to ensure those pressures do not get converted to sacks. If a quarterback takes a high rate of sacks over a large sample, it is most likely his fault.
Fields has taken 151 career sacks, the fourth-most among quarterbacks since 2021 despite ranking 23rd in pass attempts over that span (1,119). His career sack rate of 11.89% is by far the highest over that span.
Highest sack rates among 38 QBs (min. 750 pass attempts), 2021-24:
- Justin Fields, 11.89% (151 sacks / 1,119 pass attempts)
- Zach Wilson, 10.22% (113 / 993)
- Ryan Tannehill, 9.35% (112 / 1,086)
- Bryce Young, 9.08% (91 / 911)
- Russell Wilson, 9.06% (166 / 1,666)
- Daniel Jones, 8.57% (125 / 1,334)
- C.J. Stroud, 8.03% (90 / 739)
- Sam Darnold, 8.01% (99 / 1,137)
Fields will probably never be elite at minimizing sacks; that is just the nature of his play style. Quarterbacks who like to extend plays are more likely to accumulate sacks than pocket quarterbacks who get the ball out quickly.
However, some of the league’s best mobile quarterbacks have shown that it is attainable to play that style of football while limiting their sack rate to around a league-average level. This is what Fields should strive for.
Fields is fourth among quarterbacks in rushing yards since 2021; here are the sack rates of the other four quarterbacks ranked top-five in rushing yards from 2021-24 (ranks out of 38 qualifiers):
- Josh Allen: 4.09% (2nd)
- Kyler Murray: 5.83% (13th)
- Lamar Jackson: 7.03% (21st)
- Jalen Hurts: 7.15% (26th)
Allen’s performance in this area is downright historic, but the other three quarterbacks provide an attainable bar for Fields to aim for. To put it into perspective, the NFL average sack rate in 2024 was 6.87%. Murray, Jackson, and Hurts were all in a fairly close vicinity of that number.
While Fields’ legs are a weapon, they are also his enemy at times. His explosive runs are often canceled out by the bone-headed sacks he takes as a result of trying to do too much. If Fields can cut his sack rate down to a league-average level without sacrificing his explosiveness as a rusher, he will become a far more dangerous threat with the ball in his hands. The league’s best mobile quarterbacks know when it’s time to make a play and when it’s time to live for the next down.
Getting the ball out quicker
Fields’ propensity for sacks is directly related to the next weakness on our list: his release speed.
Fields tends to hold the ball for what equates to an eternity in the NFL. Here are his snap-to-throw averages each season and their ranks among quarterbacks with at least 200 dropbacks:
- 2021: 3.06 (36th of 39)
- 2022: 3.45 (41st of 41)
- 2023: 3.39 (45th of 45)
- 2024: 3.08 (42nd of 44)
In each season of his career, Fields had one of the four highest time-to-throw averages in the NFL, including league-high marks in 2022 and 2023. His career-low mark came in his rookie year, indicating that little progress has been made.
This is the crux of many issues in Fields’ game. First and foremost, it leads to the sack problem that we already discussed. Fields gives the defense more time to reach him than just about any other quarterback. So, even if he can use his athleticism to dodge his fair share of would-be sacks, it still results in a high sack total because he allows the defense to get home for an absurd number of sack opportunities.
The best way to avoid getting sacked is to eliminate sack opportunities altogether. If you get rid of the ball before the defense has time to get home, you do not need the slightest bit of athleticism to prevent a sack. Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and Tom Brady each have one of the 10 lowest career sack rates in NFL history for this very reason.
Another benefit of releasing the ball quicker would be improved ball security. Most of Fields’ turnovers occur on elongated plays.
For his career, 21 of Fields’ 31 interceptions came on dropbacks that lasted 2.5 seconds or longer. This ratio has grown even starker after his rookie year; since 2022, a whopping 17 of Fields’ 21 interceptions were on dropbacks of 2.5+ seconds.
Fields has learned how to protect the ball on quick-passing dropbacks. After throwing six interceptions on dropbacks of ≤2.5 seconds as a rookie, he has thrown just four of them on 335 attempts since 2022, a fantastic 1.2% interception rate. It’s the long-lasting dropbacks that continue to haunt him. Over the same span, he has 17 interceptions on 513 attempts when the play lasts 2.5 seconds or more, which is a poor interception rate of 3.3%.
Fields needs to work on speeding up his internal clock. Doing so would assuredly reduce his sacks and turnovers. It also falls on the Jets’ coaching staff to build an offensive system that helps him accomplish this. Give him simple decisions that let him react quickly. Minimize the number of play calls that ask him to hold the ball and sift through complex reads.
Securing the football
We already know that Fields needs major improvement when it comes to reducing sacks and interceptions. To complete the trifecta of negative outcomes that Fields must minimize, he needs significant work on his ball handling.
Fields leads quarterbacks with 44 fumbles since 2021, five more than the closest player (Kirk Cousins). This is particularly troubling when considering he is 21st at the position with 1,688 total plays (combined pass attempts, rush attempts, and sacks) over that span.
For his career, Fields is averaging one fumble every 38.4 plays. That is the worst among 38 qualifiers since 2021, and it is not particularly close:
- Justin Fields, 38.4 (44 fumbles on 1,688 plays)
- Matt Ryan, 44.8 (26 on 1,166)
- Sam Darnold, 53.8 (26 on 1,398)
- Tua Tagovailoa, 55.9 (35 on 1,955)
- Kirk Cousins, 56.0 (39 on 2,184)
- Gardner Minshew, 56.6 (19 on 1,075)
- Kyler Murray, 57.3 (36 on 2,061)
- Jacoby Brissett, 57.8 (16 on 925)
In 2024, the league-average starting quarterback ran 39.5 plays per game, right around Fields’ career average of one fumble every 38.4 plays. So, Fields is essentially fumbling the ball once per game. After all, he has the same number of career fumbles as career starts (44).
Fields received praise for his ball security in the 2024 season, as he finished with just two turnovers in six starts. This included one lost fumble. However, Fields was flat-out lucky in this department. He fumbled six times on 239 plays, a rate of once every 39.8 plays – basically, just as putrid as his career rate. Luckily, Pittsburgh recovered five of the six.
Summary: Reduce negative plays by refining habits and mindset
Justin Fields can do things that many other quarterbacks simply cannot. If someone can match him in one area, Fields probably has another physical trait that his competitor does not. It can be argued that Fields’ triple threat of straight-line speed, change-of-direction quickness, and arm strength is only rivaled by Josh Allen and Anthony Richardson among today’s quarterbacks.
However, Fields must tone his game down to the point where he can maximize his amazing tools without a reckless mentality that leads to ample mistakes.
Fields is a negative-play machine. In his career, Fields has a combined total of 226 sacks, fumbles, and interceptions, which places him third at the position since 2021. He achieves one of these outcomes (sack/fumble/INT) at a rate of once every 7.5 plays, which is the worst rate among 38 qualified quarterbacks since 2021. The only other quarterback under the 8.0 mark is Zach Wilson (7.7).
The Jets are gambling that the NFL’s most prolific producer of lowlights can eradicate these bone-headed mistakes from his game. Hypothetically, the ceiling is immense if he can pull it off. But after four seasons, it is fair to wonder whether these issues are fixable.
Josh Allen was this type of player when he came into the NFL. It wasn’t until he learned how to manage a football game that his gifts began to truly shine. Today’s Allen still does the mesmerizing things that made him a high draft pick, but not at the cost of smart quarterbacking. He is able to generate MVP-caliber production and SportsCenter-worthy highlights while maintaining a low rate of negative plays.
Allen’s development stems from a shift in his mentality. He came into the league thinking that his physical tools meant he could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Deep shot? Boom, I have the arm strength to hit that. Unblocked blitzer coming off the edge? Easy money, I can juke him out and extend the play.
Soon, Allen learned that no quarterback can play that way in the NFL. He learned to focus his energy on doing the little stuff – check the ball down, throw it away, scramble for a short gain and slide – yet, while doing so, he trusts that his natural gifts will instinctively take over when the time is right. Allen confidently lets a deep shot rip or plays streetball in the open field when the heat of the moment demands it, but he rarely tries to make those things happen. This is how achieves an elite blend of explosiveness and stability.
Conversely, Fields has always appeared to place his focus on doing the big things. He wants to hang onto that deep route and give it a chance to break open. He wants to extend the play and make three defenders miss to break loose for a huge scramble. When you chase these things – rather than let them come to you, the way Allen has learned to do – negative results will be a frequent consequence.
Fields must learn to embrace when a play-extension attempt is dead. It is okay to chuck the ball out of bounds. Turning those face-palming sacks into relatively harmless incompletions will completely overhaul his game.
Fields must speed up his internal clock. The key is to shift his mentality from chasing the big plays to trusting himself to instinctively make them when they are there. The mindset should be to give the deeper routes a quick peek, and if there is nothing indisputably open, immediately get to the checkdown and keep the offense moving. You cannot go wrong with staying ahead of the chains with positive gains and reducing the opportunities for sacks or interceptions. The big throws will come.
Finally, Fields simply needs to tighten his grip on the football and keep it off the ground.
It’s quite the laundry list of basic fundamentals for a quarterback with 44 professional starts to work on. But hey, going into the 2024 season, Sam Darnold had 12 more career starts than Fields currently does, and a career passer rating that was 5.6 points worse. If Darnold can turn into a Pro Bowl quarterback overnight, why not Fields? (Yes, Justin Jefferson and Kevin O’Connell are different than Garrett Wilson and Tanner Engstrand, but you get my point.)
Fields is certainly capable of such a turnaround. The better question is what the odds of it are. Considering how many pivotal facets of the position he struggles with, it does not seem all too likely, but the Jets are willing to take their chances. If they want to tilt the odds in Fields’ favor, they must help him hone in on the three main areas of improvement that we discussed today.
