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Jets owner Woody Jonnson is very high on the team’s new QB Justin Fields.
“I think Justin Fields is going to be a total winner for us,” Johnson said. “I’ve been impressed with him since his college days — it was [Fields] or Trevor Lawrence — and I think he’s going to be really good.”
It’s always good to have a positive attitude in life.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale wrote one of the most important books of the 20th century about this – “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
However, while positive thinking is very important, it will only take you so far at the quarterback position in the NFL.
No matter how high you are on a QB, he needs certain elements to his game to be “really good.”
Fields could very well turn out to be a “total winner” for the Jets, but so far in the NFL, his record as a starter is 14-30, so some might wonder where that effusive praise is coming from.
However, as they say in stock brokers’ commercials, “past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.” So that can cut the other way as well. Even though he hasn’t been a “total winner” in the past, he could turn into one moving forward.
That is what the Jets are hoping for.
But if that is going to happen, Fields needs to improve in certain areas that are a must if a quarterback is going to be consistently successful on the NFL level.
He needs to throw with more anticipation and not wait for players to flash open before throwing to them. You can get away with that in college, but it’s harder to rely on that consistently in the NFL because the throwing windows are generally smaller.
Fields also needs to get rid of the ball faster. He often holds the ball too long, leading to unnecessary sacks. He got sacked a lot in Chicago, and while some of that was on the offensive line, some of it was also him holding on to the ball too long.
He needs work on going through his progressions because he often locks on his first read, instead of looking to his second, third and fourth options. He too often telegraphs passes to his first read, leading to incompletions or picks.
While Fields makes some ESPN highlight plays here and there, the body of work between those grand-slam home runs needs to improve.
“Justin Fields is fun, and Justin Fields is exciting, and the highlights are exciting, and the running plays are exciting, and the deep bombs are exciting,” ESPN analytics expert Aaron Schatz told the Post-Gazette. “You don’t want to pay attention to all the other plays in between where he’s not good and all the sacks he takes and all the pressure he makes for himself and all the incompletions.”
So if he is going to be a “total winner” as Mr. Johnson surmises, some things must improve.
He has rare natural ability with a 4.4 speed and a rocket arm, but we all know it takes more than that to be a successful NFL quarterback.
So much of an NFL quarterback’s success is predicated on his processing before and after the snap.
So, if he is going to be “really good,” he must marry his outstanding physical gifts with improved processing and field vision.
April 7, 2025
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