Gang Green Nation
Justin Fields’ Week 8 success for the Jets in their win over the Cincinnati Bengals was a surprise to many of us. It continues one of the biggest roller coaster seasons in recent memory.
ESPN’s QBR metric grades quarterbacks on a scale of 1 to 100 based on their play. Week 8 was his sixth start of 2025. Fields posted his third highest single game QBR of the season with a 67.0.
Fields’ fourth highest single game QBR this year was the 11.9 he posted one week earlier against the Carolina Panthers, a game that saw him benched at halftime.
I doubt we have seen many six game stretches where a QBR is above 67 half the time and below 12 half the time. Fields’ career has been full of high highs and low lows, but this is a bit extreme even by his standards.
I decided to take a deeper look to try and figure out trends from his good games and bad games. A major one sticks out. Doing a bit of math from box scores, I found that Fields has been either hit or sacked on 15.4% of his passing attempts in his three good performances. That number jumps to a ludicrous 76.7% in his bad games.
Now if we are judging solely by box scores, the story seems clear. Fields’ offensive line has been good when he’s played well and bad when he’s played poorly. It’s simple, right?
Anybody who has actually watched the games this year knows that is not the story. Fields has frequently been his own worst enemy in the pocket and invited pressure upon himself. A lot of the hits and sacks he has taken have been because he held the ball for too long instead of throwing it away or finding an outlet receiver.
Taking a look at NextGen Stats’ data destroys the offensive line narrative.
In Fields’ three good games, his average time to throw is 3.13 seconds, which is actually higher than his overall total of 2.95. In fact, over the course of a full season, 3.13 seconds from snap throw would tie for the second longest rate in the league.
What I think we can say is that Fields’ offensive line has been exceptional in his three good games. To have a low hit rate with a quarterback holding the ball for that long shows the protection has been excellent.
That aligns with most scouting reports on Fields that he can be slow to get through his progressions and hold onto the ball for too long but also that he flashes high end ability when the infrastructure around him is good.
There is a challenge for the Jets. While there is young talent on the offensive line, two of the three good Fields games have been against Miami and Cincinnati. Both teams’ pass rushes were quite poor heading into their games against the Jets. The dominance in pass protection likely had quite a bit to do with the...
