Out of curiosity I pulled up the complete stats for all Chicago Bears passers on https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/chi/career-passing.htm. I was interested in seeing how Justin Fields W-L ratio stacked up to other QBs, however when I selected yardage as the criteria to sort out the QBs I was genuinely surprised to see how closely Kyle Orton and Justin Fields stack up in terms of their passing stats for the same number of games played with the club. Both currently sit at a total of 33 games, however their total passing yardage is nearly identical:
At 33 games:
Kyle Orton: 5319 yards
Justin Fields: 5313 yards
Fields has a higher completion percentage (60.1%), however one could argue that is because he often runs the ball out of bounds rather than throwing it away when under pressure. Fields also has a higher TD %, but also a higher INT %. Otherwise, it’s strange to see how closely their passing stats match even though Orton was seen as a stopgap QB at best in an era where we had a strong defense and Fields has been promoted (at least in the past) as a ‘generational’ QB by his fans and the club.
It’s also interesting to look at overall QB W-L records. Fields obviously has one of the worst W-L records in team history (and it looks like the absolute worst with over 20 starts, as his percentage is down there with Cade McNown, who had fewer starts), but I was honestly surprised to see that Grossman’s W-L record was nowhere near what I somehow remembered it being.
My takeaway is this, as someone who is tired of all the excuses for Fields and is becoming motivated to post here by all the ‘ride or die with Fields’ mentality: I don’t believe Fields is the future and think his stans are not paying attention, however he is about equal as a passer to all the mediocre QBs that we eventually moved away from in the 2000s. His passing stats, based on this chart, basically fall within the Orton-Grossman-Miller range of the 2000s. These were QBs who had some good moments, but they were all guys the Bears moved on from after they got past 30 games. Cutler’s stats are significantly better and I feel guilty for bashing on the guy back in the day:
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/chi/career-passing.htm
I get what you’re saying I do, I do think it’s fair to point to the point totals given up last year and this year. That would in theory give him more wins if they simply held a team to 20 points lol. And I think even you’d agree the last 2 years we’ve started the season with so many missed assignments for blocking and route running… and what have you and I understand that fields takes a share of the blame… but dudes were legit missing blocks early last year and early this year. And that to me is coaching. Fields hasn’t been perfect by any means. But to point to bagent and say yep. He’s 2-2, the team was rounding into form when Justin got hurt. Defense was starting to stop the run, and offense was scoring points. I think we are all in same boat here. Fields haters and truthers. We just want a winning product. The haters want it now… and I think the truthers know that this is it for fields. He sinks for swims. But we both just want success that translates to wins. And football is the ultimate team sport.