NFL analyst: Bears are ruining Justin Fields like Texans ruined David Carr
Despite playing his best game of the 2022 season in Sunday’s 20-12 loss to the New York Giants, in which he threw for 174 yards and no interceptions while running for another 52 yards, Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields still took a beating.
The second-year QB was pressured a season-high 18 times, hit a season-high nine times, and sacked a season-high six times as the Bears scored zero offensive touchdowns for the first time this year.
The abuse Fields suffered behind a middling offensive line, was enough to prompt former NFL quarterback-turned-analyst Dan Orlovsky to boldly state that the lack of protection the Bears have given Fields could potentially derail the 23-year-old QB’s career.
And Orlovsky may have a point.
Carr was sacked an NFL-record 76 times during his rookie season with the Houston Texans. He was also the most-sacked QB in the NFL in three of the five seasons he was a starter, and he was sacked on 10.5 percent of his total drop backs.
For comparison, Fields has been sacked on 19.3 percent of his drop backs this year, and he’s been sacked on 13.4 percent of drop backs in his career.
Per Pro Football Focus, Fields has been pressured on 49 percent of his dropbacks this season, second to only New York’s Daniel Jones, and 30.6 of those pressures have turned into sacks, tied for seventh-most. He’s also been pressured on one-third or more of his drop backs in each of the last three games.
Fields has been sacked 15 times, tied for third-most, and he leads the NFL with 13 scrambles through four games. When under pressure, Fields has completed just 5 of 21 passes for 121 yards, a touchdown, and three interceptions, and his 49 total pressures are tied for 10th-most in the NFL.
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