On the Move: Breaking Down Justin Fields on the Jets

Another year, another offseason wondering whether we should treat Justin Fields like a potentially elite fantasy QB, or running away as fast as one of the most prolific rushing QBs of all time. Rushing production is a bit of a cheat code in fantasy football, and Fields takes the benefits of rushing production to their logical extreme.

In no world would we say Fields is comparable, in a real-life sense, to QBs like Patrick Mahomes or Matthew Stafford, etc. But Fields’ ability to run the football from the QB position is truly in rarified air. The greatest rushing QB of all time is Lamar Jackson, but Fields, at his best, has proven he can do that kind of damage as a rusher. 2022 was Fields’ peak. He played in a career-high 15 games, and rushed for 1,143 yards and eight touchdowns. That yardage total was the second-most ever for a QB behind Jackson’s 2019 campaign, and was one of only four such seasons in NFL history. In that season, he ran for 100+ yards three different times, and was at 50+ yards in 10 games. We’ll get to his shaky passing soon, but that rushing production is like starting the game with a passing TD in his back pocket.

That was Fields at his absolute best, but even in 2023, which was a step down, he had 124 rushing attempts, 657 yards and four touchdowns in 13 games. Last season, Fields opened as the Steelers’ starting QB, and the numbers were down. He went 4-2 as their starter, but, as Stephen A. Smith once famously said, I’m here to tell you that we don’t care. Wins and losses are irrelevant in fantasy, it’s about the stats he put up. And one of the NFL’s best rushing QBs ever was simply good, not great. And Fields needs to be great.

Fields averaged 6.2 attempts per game, down from 9.5 in 2023, and he posted a career-worst 28.9 yards on the ground. This could be chalked up to the Steelers playing as conservatively as possible though, as their defense was playing like the best in the league, and the plan was always to play it safe until Russell Wilson was ready to take over. The New York Jets, unless a dramatic move is made in the draft, are going to enter the year with Fields as their unquestioned starter. That means he’ll be running wild. So we need to figure out what the appropriate level of risk is.

Now we know that rushing is a cheat code, but you do need to be able to put up reasonable passing numbers for two reasons. First, if you don’t, the weeks in which a defense does keep the rushing in check become catastrophic for fantasy managers. Fields was held to 30 or fewer rushing yards three times last season, so if he’s doing zero through the air, it’s a problem. The second reason is that if he really can’t move the ball through the air, benching is a serious risk. Ask Anthony Richardson. Richardson was the second highest-scoring QB on the ground last season on a per game basis and was limited to just 11 starts and was briefly benched. The Jets don’t really have a threat behind him like Joe Flacco was to Richardson, but things can change, and really if Fields is flat out running a stalled offense, they’ll make a move.

So how bad is Fields as a passer? No team has ever really trusted him to spread his wings. Maybe that tells us he’s really bad, or maybe it tells us there’s room to grow. Here’s the hard data. He’s never averaged 200 yards per game through the air, never thrown for 20 touchdowns in a season, and has thrown 40 passes just once in his entire career, a game in which he managed 166 yards. He has nine games with multiple touchdown passes in 44 career starts, which is obviously atrocious. If we want to be a bit more positive though, while the Steelers clearly had him shackled to limit risk, he showed major improvement in the turnover realm. His interception rate dropped to 0.6%, and built on a nice drop that had begun in 2023. His completion percentage rose to 65.8%, and he had his highest-ever adjusted net yards per attempt with Pittsburgh (7.21). It would be foolish to expect some kind of massive leap in passing production with the Jets, but there is some evidence that Fields should be capable enough to avoid a benching as long as there isn’t some new threat that’s added in the weeks before the season starts.

So if we remove the fear of a benching, we’ve seen his ceiling be a 2,562-yard season in 2023 with Chicago, as well as a genuinely good connection with D.J. Moore, arguably the first time Fields had ever played with a true WR1. Fields supported Moore’s best NFL season; Moore finished with 136 targets, 96 receptions, 1,364 yards and eight receiving touchdowns. The Jets’ WR is built similarly, with a bona fide WR1 in Garrett Wilson and….not much else. That doesn’t bode well for career-high passing production or Fields, but it could establish a baseline for him that, when supported by elite rushing, makes him a valuable asset.

The top rushers at the position – Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels – have all proven way more upside than Fields as passers. He won’t be in the same realm as them. And there was enough deterioration in his rushing output last year that he is shakier than ever when compared to the top-tier pocket passers like Joe Burrow who delivered last year, and even those who didn’t but have in the past, like Dak Prescott, Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert.

Fields is in the mix with the promising pocket passers like Jordan Love and C.J. Stroud, as well as the rushing QBs like Kyler Murray and Anthony Richardson whose weekly floor is very, very low but have QB1 ceilings on any given Sunday. To me, that sounds like a low-end QB1 with week-winning potential, and that’s exactly where I love to shop for my QBs on Draft Day. Fields should be a major value, likely available near the ends of your Drafts, and pairing him with a safe backstop gives you a chance to load up at the skill positions and still have a shot at an elite option.