Week 4 Colts’ Opposing QB: An analysis of Justin Fields

Thanks to the nflFastR project and NFL NextGen Stats for the timely sources of data.

For those of you new to this, I will publish key QB stats each week judging how well the upcoming opponent QB has performed. Yes, O-Line, receivers, and play-calling impact these numbers but they are primarily QB measures. I will probably modify the charts throughout the season. Commentary will be brief but feel free to let me know in the comments that stats aren’t everything. (click charts for larger view)

DASHBOARD

Pittsburgh fans think they have seen the rebirth of Justin Fields and they are not wrong, just not for the reasons they think. Here’s what is new and not-so-new with Justin Fields.

• He has no run game to support him, even though the Steelers are implementing a run first offense (27th arsr, 23rd edp). That’s not really any different from what he is used to.
• So far, Pittsburgh has not used shotgun a lot (29th sg%), which is a change for Fields as he took 71% of his snaps from the gun in Chicago.
• He has faced much harder passing defenses this year, but sees about the same amount of zone reads (8th opd, 16th oz%).
• One gigantic difference for Fields is that he is facing less than average pressure (19th pr%). In his first 4 years in the league, no QB was pressured more than Fields as he was under duress on 46% of his dropbacks!
• The reduced pressure is partly due to a dramatic decrease in his Time to Throw (Bears 3.11, Steelers 2.82). In addition, the Steelers O-line is giving him decent protection (15th Pass block Win Rate), whereas the Bears protection was pretty much absent (26th PBWR in 2023).
• Those quicker throws are coming off of much shorter passes. He has dropped his avg depth of target from 9.0 yards with the Bears (#1 adot) to 6.7 yards on the Steelers (25th adot). That leads to shorter completion depth (6.7 vs 5.8), but it has greatly improved his completion rate (61.0% to 74.0%) as he has lifted his accuracy from almost league worst to 4th best this year (+7.2% cpoe).
• And all those extra completions have boosted his yards per attempt half a yard (7.5 to 8.0), which is a big difference, but still only ranks 16th. Also, he still abandons a lot of pass attempts (6th aa%), though this year it has been primarily through scrambles and not sacks (4th scr%, 18th sck%). In Chicago, he had the highest rate in both scrambles and sacks.
• His penchant to abandon passes, drags down his YPA about 1.5 yards to 6.5 net yards per dropback (17th ny/d). That’s a similar drop to what he experienced in Chicago, although his ending ny/d in Pittsburgh is much better (6.5 up from 5.8).
• He still has difficulty getting first downs. His 26.7% first down rate ranks 24th among all QBs and that is similar to his time in Chicago (27.3% 28th rank). That makes it hard to get TDs and so far his TD rate is much worse (24th TD%).
• A vast improvement, however, has been his ability to take care of the ball. He’s gone from the highest turnover rate to almost the lowest (26th to%).

So basically, the Steelers are giving him better protection and having him make shorter throws, which is dramatically reducing his sacks and turnovers while lifting his overall completion rate and yardage efficiency. Those are all good things and are reflected in his 8th best EPA efficiency (EPA/d). However, he still has poor yardage efficiency underneath, he abandons attempts and can’t get first downs, so his average play isn’t very successful (21st PSR).

It’s not sustainable to have a big discrepancy between high EPA efficiency and low success rate. In my experience, it is much more likely that his efficiency drops (lower cpoe, less deep ball success) than it is for his success rate to increase (more first downs, more consistent play). I think he regresses to a below average QB again.

HOW WELL?

He hasn’t had what I would call a complete game yet, but clearly he is trending better than he did in Chicago.

HOW FAR?

He threw deep in week 2, but his short depth of targets in the other 2 weeks are unusual for his previous style of play.

TO WHO?

Pickens is his favorite and most successful target, but Freiermuth has been a valuable safety valve.

HOW ACCURATE?

His accuracy has been trending up since the back end of last season and he is no doubt a deep threat.

HOW FAST?

The last 2 games have seen a huge reduction in this time to throw. Adjusting for depth of target, it is still a little longer than average, but it’s a huge improvement nonetheless.

TO WHERE?

He’s had a lot of success on deep throws and unlike a lot of QBs nowadays, he has been good on short throws over the middle.