Top 10 quarterbacks in the 2021 NFL Draft

#3 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Justin Fields (Ohio State)

6’ 3”, 225 pounds; JR

Justin Fields

Justin Fields competed with Trevor Lawrence for the top quarterback recruit in the country in 2018 and had to sit on the bench his one year at Georgia behind Jake Fromm, where he showed sparks in special packages. He decided to transfer after the season due to some alleged racial comments and instantly became a Heisman trophy front-runner.

As a sophomore, he completed 67.3% of his passes for almost 3300 yards and 41 touchdowns to go with just under 500 yards and another ten scores on the ground, while having thrown just one interception until the CFP semifinal against Clemson, where he was picked off twice.

In eight games last season, he completed just over 70 percent of his passes for 2100 yards and 22 TDs versus six INTs, plus just under 400 yards and five more TDs rushing. He was a first-team All-Big Ten selection, won the conference and faced Clemson in the playoff both years, winning the latter one and making it to the national title game, even though the Buckeyes were outmatched against Alabama.

With the build of a Greek god, Fields has the zip on the ball to make far-hash drive throws and drill seam routes with safeties in range constantly. He had a perfect TD-to-INT ratio in the red-zone in 2019 at 24-to-nothing, which a lot of that success was in part thanks to him throwing absolute bullets, if his receivers just had a step or a window to put it into.

You routinely see him place the ball away from a defender in the hip-pocket of his targets or away from where they are leaning towards. Fields also clearly has the arm strength to push the ball down the field and was one of the most lethal deep ball throwers in the country these last two years. If you have a deep safety trying to play flat-footed against him, he will punish that guy with bombs on post routes routinely.

At the top end, Fields arguably has the best accuracy from a clear platform of all QBs in this draft, especially on the deep ball, but also firing passes into voids in zone coverage, where he protects his receivers from running into collisions. I love his location on comeback routes, where he really forces receivers to work back towards him, to avoid any doubt.

You can see the ball-placement to allow receivers to get vertical right away or not have to slow down at all. Overall, he produced only 18 turnover-worthy plays in his career and significantly decreased his number of fumbles last year, from nine to two (14 versus nine games).

When he is on, he’s very hard to stop, which we saw in 2019, when he had five different games, where he threw four touchdowns and no picks, or when he went off for six TDs against Clemson in the CFP semifinal at the start of the year, beating tight coverages with rifles and hitting his receivers streaking free downfield, despite getting a huge shot at his ribs early on and having to kind of gut it out.

Fields is very sturdy inside the pocket, with quiet feet and little wasted movement. He can put the ball out in front with his feet planted into the ground, as there’s trash around his legs or he has a free blitzer charging at him. He had one of those for a touchdown mid-way through the national title game, where he laid the ball to the back-pylon, as his slot receiver was still giving the safety a little stutter.

Fields truly has Deshaun Watson's quality, where he can make the unblocked rusher miss or shake off a sack attempt due to his strong base. He can extend the play and often times take off for key scramble yardage. He consistently finds ways to escape and has the acceleration, to not get caught from behind on too many occasions, plus a sweet spin move.

Fields can move the pocket with bootlegs (from pistol in college) and rollout, where can put a lot of velocity on the ball, in part thanks to going from sidewise to vertically, in order to flip those hips. He can power the ball to the sideline off the wrong foot or lob it over defenders, who have to respect him as a runner and kind of sit down.

He made a ridiculous play against Penn State last year, where he almost stumbled to the ground and still somehow got the ball to his tight-end on a leak route with two defenders right in his grill. And he is a dangerous threat to pull the ball on zone-read plays and quickly picks up chunk plays. He has legitimate 4.4 speed (which he backed up at the Ohio State pro day), routinely leads defenders to the wrong side of blocks by aiming that way initially and has a strong lower body, to gain yards through contact.

However, there are some issues with Fields’ mechanics. He can get pretty narrow with his base and a little floppy with arm angles. He doesn’t really create opposites between his upper and lower half, which limits his hip rotations and forces his arm to do all the work. Because of that, his release points differentiate a lot and he kind of guide the ball to receivers, rather than fire it there.

I don't like that there’s this narrative out there about Fields not being able to work through progressions because I have seen him get to number three and four even. For me, it’s more about poor eye discipline, to where the pattern is designed to go to number one on deeper-developing routes, but he leads defenders there and especially stays on it, when the picture changes post-snap.

His footwork tends to get sluggish and slow, while he is processing information mentally, or there’s an extra little bounce, which leads to being late on throws. Blitz recognition was a problem for Fields in 2020 and he has to learn living for another down, not forcing something when he’s already wrapped up basically.

You look at Big Ten title game against Northwestern, where the Buckeyes had to win almost despite his mistakes, but even more so against Indiana mid-season, where the Hoosiers through some complex blitzes at him, he couldn’t really decipher what they were showing, he was way late on a lot of throws and made some desperation heaves, which led to him throwing three picks and letting their opponents hang around. Even though, in his defense – there constantly were fuck-ups in protection.

As I already mentioned, Fields brings a lot of the positives and negatives that Deshaun Watson had coming out of Clemson, where he can be in the zone and make one big play after the other, but there’s also a lack of decisiveness and he has to learn when a play is over. There will be days, where Fields just won’t be totally on his game.

There’re some inconsistencies in mechanics and in terms of being disciplined with his eyes. So I expect there to be some growing moments early on in his career, but his play-making ability and competitiveness will get him over those things. I believe there is some separation between the top two quarterbacks and Fields, but I have no idea how he has seemingly been sliding down draft boards and why nobody else seems to get looked at as closely as him.

He is a special athlete, with tremendous arm talent and somebody, who can routinely win out of structure, but what really stood out to me when I watched his tape in detail was how much he get the job done from within the pocket.