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
“Accepted as a wash by the entire fan base”… I don’t really get that argument… at all. It’s like a little kid who flunks a class and then says, “Yeah, I flunked because I considered my first ten exams to be a wash, but I did Ok in my last 5 exams so I should pass.” You are basically picking and choosing what should or should not be taken into account. If you edit out what gets counted, you can always end up with a positive evaluation because you are artificially removing anything that looks bad.
And let’s finally be honest here: Fields did not look all that great in most of his games this year. He basically had one good game. In the others he was starring down the headlights like a deer on the road in New Lennox at 3 AM. I hope that you don’t blame his play this year on the O-Line/Receivers/Coaches/Team/City, etc, as the same people who claim Bagent is 2-2 because he suddenly has great support are the same people who claim Fields has a drastic loss ratio because of the same people.
And finally, the last few years were not immediately accepted by all fans as obvious wash years. There were people - here - who seriously thought we would be contenders in his first full year. The whole ‘we didn’t plan on winning’ argument is a rewrite of history.