The New York Jets are committed to Justin Fields as their quarterback for the 2025 season. As a result, it is important for them to build a scheme that maximizes Fields’ strengths and minimizes his weaknesses. They must stir up a recipe that delivers a sizzling blend of Fields’ best attributes, brewed with his stylistic preferences in mind.
Fields, though, is a complex quarterback to evaluate. Across four NFL seasons, his play style has undergone significant shifts from year to year. Yet, each of these versions yielded a similarly underwhelming outcome. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what works best for Fields and how to get the most out of him.
After joining the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2024, Fields underwent the most drastic stylistic shift of his career, yielding a mixed bag of results. Despite the shaky output, which resulted in his benching, this version of Fields may have provided the Jets with some answers regarding their best path forward with the gifted 26-year-old.
To learn more about Fields’ play style, it makes sense to take a deep dive into his tendencies. How did he prefer to play the game in 2024? How should he play the game to become the best version of himself? And how can the Jets mold their scheme to make that happen?
One of the best ways to understand a quarterback’s play style is to dissect his preferences within the route tree. By identifying the types of routes that he prefers to target and the ones he does not, we can learn a lot about a signal-caller’s approach.
Let’s analyze Fields’ favorite and least-favorite routes to target in the 2024 season.
Justin Fields’ route tendencies in 2024
NFL Next Gen Stats groups every pass attempt (sans throwaways, spikes, batted passes, etc.) into one of 13 different route types. By looking at the percentage of a quarterback’s pass attempts in which he targets each route type, we can get an idea of his preferences.
According to data from NFL Next Gen Stats, here is a breakdown of how often Fields targeted each route type in the 2024 season (based on percentage of pass attempts), stacked against the NFL averages for comparison.
Extremely conservative
Fields’ favorite route, both in terms of his overall target frequency and his target frequency relative to league average, was the hitch route. A whopping 21.1% of FIelds’ pass attempts were hitches, 5.5% above the league average. This ranked fourth-highest out of 43 qualifiers.
The Ohio State product’s second-favorite route in both categories was the flat route. Fields threw into the flat on 18.6% of his pass attempts, 4.6% above the league average. This also ranked fourth-highest in the league.
Combined, a mammoth 39.7% of Fields’ pass attempts were either hitch or flat routes. This was by far the highest rate among 43 qualified quarterbacks.
Highest percentage of pass attempts targeting hitch or flat routes, 2024 (min. 150 total pass attempts):
- Justin Fields (39.7%)
- Andy Dalton (35.6%)
- Cooper Rush (35.4%)
- Daniel Jones (35.2%)
- Deshaun Watson (35.2%)
- Jameis Winston (33.8%)
- Drew Lock (33.7%)
- Geno Smith (33.4%)
Fields was so far ahead in this category that the gap between him (39.7%) and second-ranked Andy Dalton (35.6%) was larger than the gap between Dalton and 16th-ranked Jalen Hurts (31.6%).
While some of the throws charted as hitch routes could be 10-to-15-yard curls, the majority of hitch and flat routes do not go further than a handful of yards downfield. Essentially, most of the pass attempts grouped into one of these two route types are checkdowns. This means that Fields was a bona fide Checkdown Charlie.
Simply put, Pittsburgh had Fields playing extremely conservatively in 2024, representing a major shift from his uber-aggressive days in Chicago. This newfound mentality led to some positive results; he threw just one interception and completed a career-high 65.8% of his passes.
Thanks to his improved consistency and ball security, Fields became an approximately league-average quarterback in terms of his overall efficiency (a huge step forward from Chicago). According to NGS, he produced -0.01 EPA (Expected Points Added) per dropback, which ranked 20th out of 43 qualifiers and was a smidgen below the league average of 0.00. If you prefer a more traditional metric, his 93.3 passer rating ranked 18th of 43.
So far, we have learned this: Fields developed a league-leading affinity for shallow routes in 2024, and it helped him produce at the level of a league-average quarterback. However, there are downsides that came alongside his safer approach.
Minimal strain on the defense
If we refer back to the list of quarterbacks who joined Fields near the top of the league in hitch/flat rate, the names directly behind him were Andy Dalton, Cooper Rush, Daniel Jones, and Deshaun Watson. That is not the company you want to share.
Fields was conservative to a fault in 2024. Yes, the results worked out in the end – 4-2 record, basically league-average overall efficiency – but he was lucky.
As we have broken down before, Fields was fortunate to have just two of his 12 turnover-worthy plays capitalized upon. He had one interception across six turnover-worthy throws (per PFF) and one lost fumble across six total fumbles.
If Fields had normal luck with turnovers, his overall efficiency (and the Steelers’ record) would have been significantly worse. Instead of praising him for being a prudent game manager, we would be criticizing him (and Pittsburgh’s coaches) for turning a previously explosive yet reckless QB into a QB who is still reckless but without the explosiveness.
In 2024, Fields posted career lows in yards per completion (10.4) and average depth of target (7.8). Because his completions were yielding significantly fewer yards than in the past, he still produced only 6.9 yards per pass attempt (equal to his 2021 and 2023 seasons) despite setting a career-high in completion percentage. Basically, his decreased explosiveness was offsetting the increased consistency.
Just 15 of Fields’ 106 completions yielded a gain of 20+ yards, a rate of one every 7.1 completions. Compare that to his 45 passes for 20+ yards out of 227 completions in 2023, which is one 20+ yard gain every 5.0 completions.
Fields was very gunshy in Pittsburgh when it came to targeting most route types that strain the defense. He targeted each of the following five route types at a below-average rate: corner (-0.7% vs. NFL average), cross (-1.2%), post (-1.5%), slant (-1.9%), and in (-2.5%).
Combined, Fields targeted one of these five route types just 23% of the time, ranking 41st out of 43 qualifiers (30.6% league average).
Lowest percentage of pass attempts targeting corner, cross, post, slant, and in routes, 2024 (min. 150 total pass attempts):
- Russell Wilson, 19.6%
- Mac Jones, 21.8%
- Justin Fields, 23%
- Trevor Lawrence, 23.6%
- Drew Lock, 24.9%
- Caleb Williams, 25.8%
- Gardner Minshew, 26.8%
- Geno Smith, 27%
Once again, Fields is mostly joined by quarterbacks who were ineffective in 2024. It exemplifies the dangers of playing the position too conservatively.
Interestingly, though, one of the only two quarterbacks who targeted these routes less frequently than Fields was his teammate, Russell Wilson. It is also noticeable that both of the Jaguars’ starting quarterbacks appear in the top four. This suggests that a quarterback’s route tendencies could be very scheme-dependent.
As Jets X-Factor’s Andrew Fialkow described it in his latest Fields film review, Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith ran an “extremely basic” offensive scheme. Fialkow also noted that Fields was “rarely asked to get through full read progressions.”
These notes correlate with the route tendencies we have broken down today. Fields loved checkdowns and rarely targeted routes that take more time to develop and place defensive backs in greater conflict. Based on Fialkow’s notes and Fields’ similarities to Wilson’s tendencies in the same offense, it is clear that Pittsburgh placed shackles on Fields.
How should the Jets alter Fields’ route tendencies?
In some ways, the Steelers’ approach worked. Pittsburgh went 4-2 with Fields. They took one of the game’s most turnover-prone quarterbacks and helped him protect the ball well enough to win games with an elite defense behind him (even if it took some luck to pull that off).
However, if Fields is going to reach the ceiling that made him the 11th overall pick, the Jets need to turn him loose. The Steelers’ conservative approach limited Fields’ big-play potential as a passer, which is the attribute he must tap into to maximize his potential.
This extended to Fields’ legs, too. With Pittsburgh clearly coaching a “don’t lose us the game” mentality into Fields, he became less dangerous on the ground. Fields averaged a career-low 4.7 yards per rush attempt after scampering for 6.2 yards a pop in the Windy City.
Over three years in Chicago, Fields had 73 rushes for 10+ yards, placing sixth among all players (and second among quarterbacks) over that span. Across 356 rushing attempts, this represented one run for 10+ yards every 4.9 attempts. In 2024, though, Fields only had eight rushes for 10+ yards on 62 attempts, a much less impressive rate of one every 7.8 attempts.
If the Jets maintain Pittsburgh’s plan for Fields, it will likely backfire. Fields’ turnover luck is due to even out. With average luck, he should have had around six turnovers last year (half of his 12 total turnover-worthy throws and fumbles). If you add those turnovers to his substantially decreased explosiveness as both a passer and runner, you get a well-below-average quarterback, one who is attempting to be a game manager but failing miserably – because that’s not who he is.
The best version of Fields will rely on his elite penchant for highlight-reel playmaking while toning his mistakes down to at least a competent level. Fields doesn’t have to reach world-class levels of game management to be a good starter – he will always be Brett Favre-ian in those categories, and if he’s not, it will diminish his positive traits, as we saw in 2024. But he can still be a good quarterback if he is just “average” (or even slightly below) at the boring, game manager-type stuff while still bringing his top-tier knack for deep shots and breakaway runs.
New York needs to dial Fields’ aggressiveness back up – without going too far to the point where he reverts to his early-career recklessness. Reinvigorating Fields’ overall confidence and moxie (between both the passing and running games) must stem from tweaks to his route tendencies that encourage him to be more of a playmaker.
Turning our focus back to Fields’ route-type tendencies, here is a refresher of his breakdown.
First and foremost, the Jets need Fields to cut down on the hitch and flat routes. While it would be positive for Fields to continue relying on them at an average or slightly above average level to help him settle his game down and avoid dangerous throws, he relied on them to a fault in 2024. The Jets need to encourage Fields to turn some of those checkdowns into higher-upside downfield throws.
Which routes should he convert those checkdowns into?
Primarily, Fields needs to focus on building his confidence in targeting intermediate throws over the middle. Outside of wide receiver screens (which are almost entirely dictated by play calling), the in route was Fields’ least-targeted route relative to the league average. These routes are a major component of the intermediate passing game, often ranging from 10-to-20 yards downfield.
Fields’ film shows a player who lacks the confidence to rip the ball over the middle. On this play, Fields has a chance to step up and throw with anticipation to hit No. 19 (bottom) on the in route, but he holds the ball and takes a sack.
With the Jets, Fields will be playing under an offensive coordinator who made his name in an offense that thrives on this exact route. As the Lions’ passing game coordinator in 2024, Tanner Engstrand played a part in Jared Goff ranking second in the NFL with 11.1% of his pass attempts targeting in routes, trailing only Brock Purdy (11.2%). Compare that to Fields’ 3.7%.
It’s not just the in route specifically – it’s all in-breakers where Engstrand can help Fields convert his checkdowns into big-play opportunities.
Overall, Goff targeted any type of in-breaking route (in, slant, cross, angle, post) on 36.5% of his attempts, again ranking second-highest behind only Purdy. Fields was 41st with a 23.6% rate (one spot behind Wilson in the same offense).
It is unrealistic to expect Fields to jump to Goff territory overnight, but if Engstrand can help Fields turn a healthy chunk of his checkdowns into confident shots over the middle, it will go a long way toward maximizing Fields’ skill set. Reaching a league-average frequency of in-breaking routes – particularly the in route – is a realistic goal for Fields and the Jets’ coaching staff to strive for.
