Recently, I’ve heard a lot of Justin Fields slander for his poor play recently. Yes, it hasn’t been great, but it’s been about as good as you can ask for in his current situation. So in this article, we’re gonna go through some of the biggest and most prevalent reasons that I think Justin Fields has been struggling in the recent games.
Lack of Weapons
I know, I know. We’ve heard all offseason that Justin Fields doesn’t have many weapons. As much as we’ve heard it, it truly became a blatant problem in the New York Giants game on October 2nd. In the aforementioned game, Justin couldn’t seem to find open receivers anywhere on the field. Below is a statistic on the percentage of amount of time the Chicago Bears have with open receivers, and that number is significantly lower just about every other team. This is completely unacceptable if you want a young QB to develop properly. If you remember, Josh Allen was seen as a questionable NFL starter before he had the weapons around him that he has now such as Stefon Diggs. Let me make this clear in saying: Josh Allen is a better NFL QB than Justin Fields. Justin is an unproven commodity in the NFL landscape. But given time and help, he could massively improve.
Poor Playcalling
In the Bears game against the Giants, there were many… questionable calls. I’m not a huge “blame the Playcaller” type of guy, but when you aren’t trusting your QB who has already connected on a few big passes, that’s a little fishy. It becomes a problem when you need your QB to develop properly while throwing the ball but you won’t call plays to let him do so. I get it. Luke Getsy is a new Playcaller. But shouldn’t we be playing to our strengths and adjusting? Playing to our strengths does mean run, but why would we be running up the middle over and over again when it clearly isn’t working? Getsy definitely needs to figure something out, hopefully sooner rather than later for Justin Fields’ sake.
Conclusion
Justin Fields is a talented, young QB. Before we deal any judgment to the guy, we need to give him time to work out some of his quirks and more than anything we need to give him a team to work with. I truly don’t believe that any QB in this league, good or bad, would be able to succeed in this position. So let’s give Justin some breathing room and let the kid work. This team has a lot of potential, and potential takes time.
