While Justin Fields had a rough rookie season, he has the opportunity to make great strides in 2022. With rising stars in Darnell Mooney and Byron Pringle, Fields has a young, strong core to build connections with, giving him the potential to help your fantasy team.
While he didn’t get much time last season, Fields did rank 15th amongst QBs for average FPOE (fantasy points over expected) with 0.01 FPOE per play. This doesn’t seem like much, but it shows serious potential for a QB on a poor team (find my article explaining how players on bad teams have trouble performing here) and is great considering his age (ranks 2nd amongst rookie QBs). With more touches in 2022 and a new head coach, Fields could make a splash!
One of Fields’ biggest setbacks was his offensive line–he was the 10th most sacked QB in the NFL last season, and the Bears were ranked 17th in the league for pass blocking with a line grade of 66.8 via PFF. Despite this, Fields showed his aggressiveness with a high scramble rate of 15% and succeeded outside of the pocket as he ranked 15th in EPA/scramble amongst QBs (with more than 15 scrambles) with 0.48 EPA/scramble. If the Bears can bolster their line this season, Fields should have a chance to make a greater impact in the passing game and rack up the points in fantasy. Even though his improvisation (stat correlated to the frequency of audibles) is low, it isn’t much of a concern, as Fields likely had little play calling control last season with his limited playing time.
With an ADP of 122, Fields is worth the 13th-round pick, as he could be a strong backup QB with high upside and breakout potential.
That’s all for this article, stay tuned for more in the coming days!
M-FANS 